House Call
by VincentM
Summary: A follow up to Tech Support, Richie tries to figure out why the Watchtower is crashing. The cause is more sinister than originally expected and much more closely tied to Dakota than anyone thought.
1. Shutdown

A/N: This is a follow-up to "Tech Support." I've had this chapter written out for awhile before I wrote that story. It's funny - it actually follows something that is going to happen in Justice League fairly soon. Ah, good to know I think the same way as Dwayne McDuffie. Thanks for reading and enjoy!

House Call  
Chapter One: Shutdown  
By: VincentM

"Night vision. Night vision would have been cool."

The words came out slightly muddled from Richie's mouth, mostly due to the small flashlight stuck between his teeth. The white beam of light illuminating the dark path in front of him wavered wildly with each word and each cautious movement through the tight space. Crawling on his hands and knees, ducking his head to avoid the wires dangling down from above, Richie slithered forward like a snake, fumbling with an ammeter and a few other tools.

"Or extra hands," he said, rolling over on his back and balancing the flashlight between his knees to shine light on the area he needed to see. "Or telekinesis might be better, so I wouldn't get funny looks. But, oh, no, I had to be smart one."

Hooking up the ammeter to the circuit in question, he frowned at the number that flashed back at him, making a mental note of it. Too low, the power wasn't flowing through the circuits as it should, which explained some of the problems he was encountering. Why the power was so low, however, Richie hadn't yet quite figured out.

Scooting backwards to take a look at the next power relay, he felt the plating at his back start to shift, heard the metal groan unhappily, and had a feeling about what was going to happen next.

"Aw, crap," Richie said as the floor suddenly disappeared and gravity reared its ugly head.

In a hasty move to prevent himself from falling, Richie reached out and grabbed the edge of the duct he'd been crawling through, hearing the metal plating he'd been sitting on clang to the floor a few seconds later, but not before somebody shouted. Wincing, his feet dangling in the air while his fingers turned white clutching the edge of the duct, Richie groaned.

"Sorry," he called out in apology, not able to see who'd been hit.

Bracing himself, he reached up and grabbed the most solid thing above him he could find as the rest of the crawlspace fell away, waving lazily on the two bolts that still held it in place. He hung there in resignation, looking down at the floor far, far below. Down in the distance, a few brightly costumed figures looked up at him with varying expressions of surprise and amusement.

"Flight," he added softly. "Being able to fly would be definitely cool."

Superman floated up next to him at that moment. Richie wasn't sure how to feel - grateful or embarrassed. He settled on a combination of both.

"Are you okay?" Superman asked, reaching out a hand to his lower back, essentially holding Richie up with absolutely no effort.

"Fine, fine," Richie said, shrugging, taking the opportunity of not having to hold onto the ceiling to prevent his own messy death to gather up his tools. "I think I hit somebody, though."

"It's just Booster. He'll live."

"That's good."

Richie put the flashlight in his pocket, then glanced down at the floor once more. The distance from the duct to the ground was nothing short of impressive. The artificial gravity was working, at least, even if nothing else seemed to be going right. Richie strongly regretted ever coming up, not for the first time.

"J'onn wanted an update on your progress." Superman said. "Want me to carry you down?"

Putting his arms around the hero's neck, Richie sighed. "Sure, I mean, as long as it's dignified, right?"

Superman smirked, which put Richie off-guard. He wasn't even aware Superman _could_ smirk. Apparently, the man of steel had been hanging around Batman too much. Feeling rather foolish, Richie hung on as Superman lowered them back down to beautiful, beautiful solid ground. Disentangling himself from the other man's cape as soon as they touched the floor, Richie brushed himself off and tried to gather up what was left of his dignity. There wasn't much.

A few of the more seasoned superheroes and heroines were laughing at him. Richie ignored them, shoving his hands in his pockets and following Superman to the control center. He missed Dakota more than ever at times like this. At least there, he and Static were the top dogs. Sure, Adam was older than them, but he rarely engaged in crime fighting, too involved with Virgil's sister and his music career to take the time. The Justice League had grown so large, on the other hand, Richie didn't even know half the members very well and all of them either had years of experience or super skills in such excess, it had the effect of making he and Virgil look like little kids playing dress-up, regardless of how tough their Bang Baby enemies happened to be.

To make matters worse, everybody was so freakishly tall! Richie thought he might have a major crick in his neck before this house call was finished. Silently cursing his mother's side of the family and the short genes he inherited as a result, Richie ducked his head, avoiding Booster Gold's angry glare in his direction, finally leaving the common area behind.

J'onn J'onzz, the Martian Manhunter, yet another freakishly tall super hero and an alien to boot, stood in his customary place behind the main Watchtower control console, a small frown on his face as he stared down at the readouts. He didn't look especially happy, and Richie couldn't blame him. He wasn't especially happy either that the Watchtower was acting up and he had closer ties to it than J'onn did.

"Gear," J'onn said, not looking up, "have you made any headway into the malfunctions?"

"Only that they shouldn't be happening," Richie said with a sigh, hopping up onto the dais to stand next to the Martian. "I'm really confused and that doesn't happen very often."

Ever since that fateful day a week or so ago, when J'onn had called him in a near panic, or as close to panic J'onn ever got, concerning the failing climate controls on the Watchtower, all of Richie's energies had been focused on figuring out the exact cause. The few short hours he'd spent up at the Watchtower when his mother graciously let him slip out only gave him enough time to slap a patch on the problem. It hadn't been a perfect fix, but it held until he was able to come up and spend more time trying to figure things out.

This made it only the second time Richie had ever come up to the new Watchtower. He tried to avoid it as much as possible, which confused a number of the original members of the Justice League, given his excitement about visiting the place with Static the previous year after the power drain. Call it paranoia or some other form of mental hang up, but the thing made him nervous. Even though the layout had completely changed, he still had visions of the station randomly lashing out to attack him.

Which was stupid, of course, since Richie had been the one Batman called upon to design it and all of its systems in the first place. The Watchtower was his creation, a child of his imagination, a task that, a year or so ago, would have made Richie squeal with girlish glee. What sci-fi geek hadn't designed their own space stations on paper? And for it to actually become a reality? Fantastic!

But a niggling voice in the back of his mind gave him pause. The new Watchtower was so incredibly powerful, the individuals that dwelled in it much the same. It worried him. True, Brainiac was no longer in a position to override the systems, but that didn't change the potential for abuse. No, he was sorry he ever accepted the task, but he couldn't say no at the time.

"Gear?"

Richie blinked, shaking off his thoughts, realizing he'd been staring blankly, lost in his own mind. It happened quite often, especially after the second Bang. Virgil was used to it, but Richie had a feeling it made people that didn't know him a little nervous. He gave J'onn and encouraging smile to prove that had not, in fact, lost his mind.

"If I didn't know better," Richie said, his fingers flying over the console's controls, pulling up the bare bones programming, "I'd think the Watchtower had a virus of some kind, but that's impossible."

"Why impossible?" Superman asked, frowning at the code flying across the screen, which Richie knew probably made no sense to anybody but himself. "Computer viruses are fairly common."

"Yes, and if the Watchtower was Windows-based, it wouldn't surprise me," Richie said patiently. "However, the programming language I used doesn't exist anywhere but here. I designed it. It's completely unique. For someone to create a virus designed to affect things on this level of the programming, they'd have to be, well, me."

The room went silent at that and Richie looked up, seeing the various collection of superheroes giving him wary looks.

"But it's not me," he said hurriedly, holding up his hands.

"If it is a virus, would it be possible for you to isolate it and remove it from the system?" J'onn asked, graciously changing the subject.

Richie shrugged. "Sure, if I could find it." He sat down heavily in a nearby chair, kicking his feet up on the console and crossing his arms over his chest, eyebrows drawing together in thought. "I've been through every sub-system and file, personally examined every single line of code, but I don't see anything out of place. There's just no reason for any of this to be happening!"

"Perhaps a flaw in the programming then?" J'onn suggested.

Richie barely resisted the urge to glare at the Martian. "J'onn, if the programming was flawed, it wouldn't have worked perfectly up to this point. You would have seen cascading system errors such as this long before now. No, this is new." He stood up, kicking the console lightly in admonishment. "I thought it might be something wrong with the hardware. I discovered some unaccountable power fluctuations in several of the circuits, but it's well within safe limits. Everything else is sudsy."

J'onn wrinkled his nose at the unfamiliar slang. "Then if it is not the programming or the hardware, then the only other possible explanation is..."

"It's coming from outside," Superman said, sounding amazed. He looked out the windows of the Watchtower, eyes narrowing as if he could see whatever it was that was mucking up the works and smash it.

Richie nodded sadly. "Somehow, some signal or something like that is breaking through the Watchtower's shields and altering the programming protocols once the commands have already been executed. That's the only thing I can think of, except..." Richie shook his head in frustration. "Even to do that, a person would have to understand how my programming works. Nobody would have that information."

"This is highly troubling," J'onn said darkly, stating the obvious. "Can you trace this signal back to its origin point?"

"I can't even find the stupid signal," Richie said. He took off his glasses, rubbing his eyes in frustration. Too many hours spent bent over the main console, followed by too many hours spent shimmying through incredibly tight crawl spaces was taking its toll. He didn't like enclosed spaces to begin with and knowing that somebody was purposely mucking up things annoyed him. It almost felt... personal.

A too-warm hand came down on his shoulder and Richie put his glasses back on, looking up. Superman was looking at him with concern. Richie, not one for being touched often, normally would have thrown the hand off, but as this was Superman, he didn't want to hurt his feelings.

"We'll figure it out," Superman said with that strange cheerful optimism of his. "Somehow, will find out how to track where this signal is coming from and we'll take care of it. In the meantime, what do you think we should do?"

Richie knew exactly what they should do, but he knew J'onn wouldn't like it.

"Shut it down," he said, sighing. "All of it. Not just turning things off - we have to disconnect all the power relays and evacuate the station. If someone has figured out a way to tap into the Watchtower's systems, we can't risk them being compromised. There's too much fire-power up here."

No, J'onn didn't like that. He didn't show emotion very often, but Richie could read the tiny frown and the slight tightening of muscles in his jaw well enough. The alien's hands tightened into fists for just a second and he walked back over to the console, looking down at it as if hoping the answers to their problems would magically appear.

"You feel that is absolutely necessary?" J'onn asked, actually sounding pained. "If the Watchtower is shut down, the signal will stop. We will not be able to track it. How will we trace the problem in order to continue operations?"

"I have a few ideas," Richie told him consolingly, understanding the alien's pain. After all, the Watchtower was Richie's baby, too, for all his private grousing about what a bad idea it had been to build it so powerful in the first place. "If the signal is as carefully masked as I suspect it is, we wouldn't have a hope of tracking it anyway. There are other ways we can find out who could be capable of doing something like this. Give me a little time, J'onn."

"If it must be done, it will be done," J'onn said with a heartfelt sigh. "I'll begin organizing the evacuation procedures. We can have everyone but a skeleton crew down to the surface in approximately two hours."

"Don't use the beaming thing," Richie told him. "The last thing we want is..."

"Anybody turned inside out, yes," J'onn replied. "Six hours, then."

Richie nodded.

* * *

"Man, this just ain't fair." 

Richie looked up from his computer, watching as Virgil strolled into the gas station, tearing off his mask and throwing it to the ground. He looked tired and a tad singed, using his powers to grab a soda from across the room and collapsing on the dilapidated couch they'd rescued during bulk trash pick up day in the neighborhood. Richie tried to hide his amusement as Virgil kicked his feet up and made himself comfortable.

"What's not fair, bro?" he asked, spinning around in his seat.

"Here I am, stuck out there fighting the bad guys in scorching summer heat while you get to lounge around in the comfort of the gas station." He popped the top of his soda, taking a long drink, grimacing when he realized it was much too warm. "That just ain't fair, man."

Richie snorted, turning back to his computer. "I wasn't the one that suggested a black costume, V. It's all on you."

"Yeah, well, it looks cooler, even if it's not in the literal sense." Richie heard him standing up, not looking up from the computer when he sensed him hovering behind him. "Any luck on the Watchtower stuff yet?"

Richie shook his head, frowning. "I've been trying to do a process of elimination. You know, who couldn't possibly do this to the systems. Narrow the suspect field, or something. It's not helping, though, because really, nobody should be able to do this."

"Except you," Virgil said, leaning down and giving him the biggest shit-eating grin Richie had seen in awhile.

"Except me," Richie agreed with a grimace. "That's not going to win me any popularity contests, is it?"

"Being popular is so overrated, Rich." Virgil dragged a chair from nearby with a wave of his hand, making himself comfortable shoulder to shoulder with his best friend. "So, talk me through it and tell me what you've got. Maybe it'll shake something loose."

Richie smiled gratefully at Virgil. Only his best friend would be willing to sit there and listen to him ramble, would allow himself to be a sounding board like that. When he thought too hard about a problem, he tended to think himself into a corner, and Virgil knew it. Yes, he'd spotted Virgil nodding off once or twice while he paced around his bedroom, babbling for hours at a time using technical jargon that even Virgil's scientifically leaning mind couldn't follow, but the gesture was always appreciated on good-faith.

"My first thought was that maybe somebody had managed to hack into my systems here, to get the keys to unlock the code inside the Watchtower's programming," Richie started, pulling up a few files for Virgil's inspection. "Thing is, though, I haven't found any evidence that we've been hacked. I've got these computers so firewalled, it would even give Hotstreak pause."

"It's nice that something would," Virgil grumbled, brushing at the ash clinging to his shirt.

Richie patted his shoulder. "Anyway, if my systems weren't compromised, then there must have been some other source where my code was readily available for viewing. The only other place I could think of was the Batcomputer. I called Batman to ask him and, well..."

Virgil laughed. "I'm guessing he didn't like having the integrity of his computer questioned."

"Gee, you think?" Richie laughed, too. "I'm pretty sure he muttered something about me being a smart ass just as I was hanging up."

"Well, that's pretty much a given, man."

Richie flipped Virgil off good-naturedly. "Point is, I'm running out of ideas. This programming language is a language all its own. I've encrypted everything so many different ways, it would take an average person twenty years to crack the code and by then, I'd have changed it several times."

"Maybe it's not an average person," Virgil said thoughtfully. "Maybe the system was hacked by another super genius. We know there's a few running around and most of them are evil."

"Maybe."

Virgil had a point on that front. Most super geniuses were evil super geniuses. The only problem with that theory, though, is that Richie couldn't see any place where the systems had been hacked. He'd made sure the Watchtower and his computers were programmed so that, should anyone go in and try to change or examine anything, it would trip a cascading series of alerts that would tell him instantly if someone was mucking up the works. While it was possible for another super genius to hack the system, theoretically, the probability that they would be able to disable all the safeguards at the same time was astronomical to the point of being impossible.

"I'm missing something," Richie said, sitting back in his chair with a sigh, frowning at his computer screen. "There's something go on here that I can't see and it's pissing me off, bro."

"Could be time for a break," Virgil suggested. "What do you say we head down to the community center and hijack a foosball table?"

"Tempting, but I can't." Richie took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. "They're counting on me to figure this out."

"Yeah, but if you burn your brain out, that's not going to help anyone," Virgil insisted.

Richie was saved from replying by the chirping of Virgil's cell phone. It was playing a midi version of some boy band. Slipping his glasses back on, Richie smirked at him.

"I can't believe you haven't changed that yet, bro," he said, laughing.

Virgil snorted, fishing his cell phone out of his pocket. "I have changed it. Sharon keeps changing it back. She's sadistic." Punching the answer key, he held the phone up to his ear. "Yo, you got V. Oh, hey, Pops."

Virgil rolled his eyes and mimed yacking motions with his free hand. Richie shook his head at him, turning back to his computer, only half-listening to Virgil's end of the conversation. The readouts of the Watchtower's operation statistics scrolled across the screen, reflecting off his glasses.

"Yeah, Pops, I'm fine," Virgil was saying. "No, I didn't get burned. My shoes are a little melted, though. No, I'm just kidding. I am! I am! I'm fine. Yes, Richie's here. He's trying to give himself a stroke. Yeah, long story. When? Okay, yeah, I can do that. Okay. Yes. Okay. Yes. Okay. I will! Okay. Bye."

Sighing, Virgil ended the call. "Pops needs me at home," he said regretfully. "Something about the grass getting higher than the bushes or something. Man, he likes to exaggerate."

Thinking of the last time Richie saw Virgil's yard, Richie didn't think he was exaggerating that much. "It's cool, bro," he said, fingers flying across the keyboard. "You know I've got a lot of work to do here."

"Too much work," Virgil said with admonishment. "You are going to have a stroke. Tell you what - I'm going to come back here in about four hours and regardless of if you're done or not, I'm dragging you out of here by force and making you go get pizza with me. Sound fair?"

"Sounds like I don't have a choice," Richie said, looking over at Virgil over the top of his glasses, "but so long as you're paying, I'll say it's fair enough."

"I always end up paying," Virgil said, whining, but getting to his feet.

"That's because my allowance keeps going to making little devices for a certain superhero to use," Richie reminded him. "Or would you rather I let you run into battle unprepared?"

Virgil gave him a flat look. "Guilt is totally not adding anything to your image, man."

"Yes, but it's effective."

Waving him off, Virgil shed his super hero costume, turning his shirt inside out to hide the emblem on the front. "Fine. I'll pay. Someday, I'm gonna start a spreadsheet with a tally of how much each of us spends to see how well it actually matches up."

"I already have one," Richie replied. "Currently, I'm about six hundred dollars ahead of you. Want to see it?"

"No."

"Didn't think so."

"Alright, man, I'm snuffy," Virgil said, holding out his fist.

Richie hit it back in a shortened version of their handshake. "Have fun mowing the yard."

"The glamorous life of a superhero." With one final wave, his backpack hanging off one shoulder with the rest of his costume hiding inside, Virgil left the gas station.

Richie leaned back on his stool, putting his hands behind his head, frowning at his computer. Once again, it was just him and line after line of complicated code to keep each other company. Richie was really starting to hate his computers.

"I need a vacation," he said to Backpack, who was currently crawling around on his desk, keeping itself amused by reorganizing his tools by height. Reaching down to the mouse, Richie clicked between several windows, trying to spot something, anything, that would shed some light on the situation. It was looking dimmer by the second.

Suddenly, Backpack stopped its organizing, its electronic eye snapping up. Richie looked at the robot in surprise, spinning around in his chair. Squinting in the muted light of the gas station, he scanned the room quickly in an attempt to see what Backpack had seen. When nothing out of the ordinary jumped out at him, Richie linked his mind with the robot's artificial intelligence, accessing its memory banks and protocols with a flick of thought, pushing aside the purposely rudimentary AI program he'd given to the thing. From what he could tell from the digital readouts that went flashing across his inner-mind, Backpack had picked up on something Not Right.

No other details than that, just a vague sensation of something not being quite copesedic. All in all, Richie found that extraordinarily unhelpful. Extracting his mind from the robot's, he blinked a few times, looking down at it with disdain.

"Don't tell me you're getting all buggy, too," Richie admonished, hitting the top of the robot with his fist.

Backpack went back to organizing his tools. Richie frowned at that behavior, so highly neurotic. Given that Backpack was more an extension of his own mind than a simple machine, Richie had the growing feeling that Backpack's actions were a sharp reflection of his own personality. That didn't put him at ease.

"Definitely need a vacation," Richie groaned, getting up. He turned around, intent on going to fetch a soda from the mini-fridge back behind the counter.

Later, when Richie thought back on the day, he'd found he had some semblance of pride at the fact that he didn't scream like a little girl and jump ten feet into the air. At the moment, though, Richie found himself slightly mortified at his choked back cry and the way his leg smashed into the desk when he hurriedly stepped back. Putting a hand over his too-fast beating heart, Richie glared.

"Hell, J'onn, you trying to give me a heart attack?" Richie snapped, trying to catch his breath from his shock. "Make a little noise, will you?"

"My apologies." The Martian Manhunter was standing in the center of the gas station, where he certainly had not been standing two seconds ago. He looked vaguely abashed, if aliens could look abashed, holding a plastic bag from Wal-Mart in one hand.

At least Backpack wasn't getting all buggy on him, Richie thought. He wondered how long the alien had been standing there, invisible to the naked eye and, apparently, to most of Backpack's sensors. He'd have to work on that.

"How long have you been here?" Richie asked, sitting back down in his chair heavily.

"Only a few moments," J'onn replied, still standing far to still to make Richie comfortable. The alien didn't seem to blink quite enough. "I came to see how you were progressing towards getting the Watchtower operational again."

If aliens could suffer from Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, J'onn fit the bill. Richie sighed, quickly executing a few keystrokes. The old dot matrix printer next to his computer ground to life, the shuttle moving back and forth quickly across the ribbon, printing off a single sheet. Ripping it off the printer, Richie got to his feet and crossed the room in two easy steps, shoving the paper into J'onn's hand not currently occupied with the Wal-Mart bag.

"As you can see from that status report I was about to send you," Richie said, walking over to the mini-fridge and retrieving his soda at last, "I've made absolutely none, save for eliminating a few of our usual suspects."

"I see." J'onn was frowning down at the paper. "Still, that qualifies as some sort of progress."

J'onn sounded incredibly disappointed, but Richie didn't miss his attempt to be encouraging. Taking a deep breath and forcing himself to relax, Richie popped open the top of the soda, crossing over to sit on the couch. Yes, J'onn was obsessed with the Watchtower, but Richie could understand why, could understand his concern. It wouldn't do for Richie to get irritated with him just because he was frustrated with himself and his lack of headway into the problem.

"Grab a seat," Richie said, tossing a pair of PlayStation controllers onto the floor and patting the now empty space on the couch next to him. "You want a soda or something?"

"No, thank you," J'onn said, sitting awkwardly on the couch. It almost made Richie laugh. The Martian looked terribly out of place in the old gas station. "Do you have a glass I could use, though?"

"Yeah, sure." Richie directed Backpack with a flick of his mind and the little robot jumped off the table and over to the cupboard, fetching a clean, tall glass for J'onn and carrying it back over to them. Richie was about ask J'onn what he wanted it for when the Martian opened up his bag from Wal-Mart and pulled out a carton of milk and... "Oreo's?"

"They're very good," J'onn said by way of explanation, nodding a pointless thank you at Backpack before pouring the milk into the glass. He pulled open the bag of cookies, sliding out the try, taking one. Then, he hefted the tray to Richie in offer.

"Thanks," Richie said, taking one of the cookies, beyond incredulous.

"I'm told there's a preferred method for eating them, if you are not aware of it," J'onn said, brandishing his cookie. "First it is necessary to dunk them in the milk, then you twist the cookies on either side in an attempt to get all of the white cream-like sugar based substance onto one of the chocolate cookies, then you first lick the cream off before eating the cookie part itself."

"I've heard about that, yes," Richie said, smothering a smile with his hand.

J'onn, on the other hand, apparently took his Oreo eating very seriously, demonstrating with aplomb the exact method he just described for what Richie supposed was his benefit. "Superman tells me this is comfort food. If there has ever been a time for food-based comfort, now would be that time."

"I suppose that's true," Richie agreed, dunking his cookie in the milk and trying not to laugh at J'onn's nod of approval.

They sat in relative silence for a few moments then, both of them working their way through the tray of Oreo's. It all felt very strange, lounging about in the Abandoned Gas Station of Solitude, sitting on a couch clearly on its last legs next to a Martian, all while eating Nabisco's finest. Richie couldn't hide it anymore. He laughed.

J'onn looked over at him curiously. "Is something the matter, Gear?" he asked, holding half a cookie in his hand.

Richie shook his head, forcing himself to stop laughing. "No, not really," he said, looking down at his cookie and smiling. "I was just wondering when my life got so strange."

"Perhaps at the... Big Bang?" J'onn suggested, frowning a little at the term for the industrial incident out on the docks.

"Yeah, maybe, except there's only one problem with that." Richie licked the cream off his cookie, swallowing it down before continuing. "I wasn't at the Big Bang, J'onn."

J'onn's frown grew, if possible, deeper. "I do not understand, Gear," he said, eyes narrowing. "I was under the impression that your evolution into metahuman status was precipitated by your exposure to the chemical agent when..."

J'onn trailed off when Richie shook his head. "I wasn't at the docks," he said with a sigh, leaning back on the couch and grabbing another cookie from the tray, fiddling with it in his hands. "The night of the Big Bang, I was tossing and turning in my bed at home miles away, worrying about Static, since I knew he might be stupid enough to go down there, even when he shouldn't have. Sure, there's been pollution from the Bang in the environment for ages on, but I never came in contact with it, not at the levels necessary to make a change. If my minimal exposure was high enough to do that, the whole city would be made up of mutants, not just an irritating handful."

"Then, if it was not the incident at the docks that began your change, then what do believe, in fact, caused it?" J'onn asked.

"I have a theory, but it can't be right." The cookie crumbled in Richie's hand and he dropped it onto the table, reaching for his soda instead.

"Why do you say that?"

Taking a thoughtful sip of his soda, Richie debated telling J'onn what he suspected. He hadn't even told Virgil about it yet, not wanting his best friend to panic when he found out. It was certainly panic-worthy, which was the main reason Richie desperately hoped he was wrong and didn't care to think about it.

Then again, if Richie was right, this was a huge deal and certainly not something he should keep to himself. He knew J'onn wouldn't go around telling everyone, wouldn't tell anyone without Richie's own approval. J'onn was one of the few people in the Justice League Richie inherently trusted. If J'onn hadn't been the one behind the controls of the Watchtower, Richie would not have designed it, hands down. No one, not Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, or any of the other super heroes did Richie trust enough to operate such a powerful machine.

If he could trust J'onn with that, Richie figured he could trust him with this, too.

"About a year ago, I started creating a database of every Bang Baby Static and I encountered," Richie began, balancing his soda between his knees. "I was hoping, with enough raw data, I might be able to predict where new mutations might occur and what those mutations might be, so that Static and I could be more prepared in the future. Flying in as a crime is in progress is great and all, but it often means we get our butts kicked at least once. It seemed logical, to approach it in a more scientific way, so I took what I knew from the Bang Babies we'd already dealt with to see if I could unlock a pattern. I knew there had to be one."

"And did you find a pattern?" J'onn asked, munching on an Oreo and staring at Richie with rapt interest.

"I did," Richie said with a nod. "The mutations at the docks all seemed to be affected by external elements in the environment. When the chemical agent hit Static, he was close to a set of downed power lines. Hotstreak, who has the ability to control fire, was near the flames. Aqua Maria fell into the water, Chainlink was climbing a fence at the time, and so on. When external elements weren't readily apparent, it seemed frame of mind played a large role in how the mutations manifested themselves, at least on some intrinsic level. Nearly all of the mutations fit into neat little boxes easily explained and extrapolated into raw data that I could manipulate, with one exception."

"You," J'onn said, nodding thoughtfully.

"Yep, me." Richie put his soda on the table and crossed the room, beckoning J'onn to follow him over to the computer. He closed out the windows still showing information regarding the Watchtower, digging into an encrypted folder and pulling up another spreadsheet. "You see here? When I'm out of the picture, the pattern fits, but when you put me back in..." Richie hit a few keys.

"The pattern falls apart," J'onn said, watching the data reorganize itself. "Curious."

"I thought so, too, and to be honest with you, it was driving me crazy."

Richie shook his head, remembering those days and nights spent pacing anyplace he could find space to do so, the algorithms attacking his brain like a cloud of gnats. Even Virgil noticed something was up and tried to distract him from what he feared was Richie's pending mental breakdown. Then, fortunately, or unfortunately, he supposed, they found themselves being contacted by the Justice League to go up to the Watchtower to solve a power problem they were having. After the three longest weeks of Richie's life that followed, the mystery of his own mutation became, if not the least of his worries, certainly much lower on the list.

"I thought the best thing I could do at that point was to try to pinpoint when my exposure occurred, to see if it would give me some idea of how and why I started changing." Richie moved the mouse to bring up a different file. "This was important, you see? If I was a wildcard, there must certainly be others lurking out there, and those were the ones we had to worry the most about, the unpredictable ones, the ones I couldn't track. I worried there might be something lurking in the environment and the last thing I wanted was some eighty year old grandmother taking a wrong turn and ending up a slime monster."

"That makes sense," J'onn said, looking carefully at each file Richie brought up for his inspection. "Such unpredictables would easily prove more dangerous than you're typical adversaries."

"Right." Richie hovered the mouse over the last file, hesitating. He swallowed the lump in his throat, but didn't open the file yet. "The only way I could think of to track my own mutation was to track my own growth in intelligence over a period of time and extrapolate it backward. Unlike Virgil, who pretty much only changed once, I could tell my own mutation was coming upon me slowly, day by day. I discovered that my intelligence was growing almost in an s-curve, which of course means it started out slow in the beginning, then changed by leaps and bounds, only to level off at some point. By calculating where the curve was going, I was able to figure out where it started. This is where it gets weird, J'onn."

With that, Richie double-clicked on the last file, a graphical display showing where Richie tracked and the overall picture of how the whole thing lined up against time. Stepping back, Richie let J'onn study the graph, watching the Martian's face. At first, his expression was tight with concentration, then, like a bolt of lightning, he suddenly saw what was so weird, his eyes going wide.

J'onn stood up straight, shaking his head firmly. "That cannot be right."

"I know," Richie said, sighing deeply, "but it is. Now do you understand why I don't talk about it much?"

"According to these calculations, Gear, you were exposed to the mutating agent almost six months prior to the Big Bang," J'onn said and he didn't sound happy about it. "How can that be possible?"

"I've never once thought the 'accident' at the docks was actually an accident," Richie replied. He left the computer behind, not wanting to look at the graph, going back to the couch and grabbing an Oreo from the tray. "It always felt contrived, like a giant experiment, done using subjects who belonged to a facet of society where, for the most part, they wouldn't be cared about or missed. I checked the shipping logs. The order to move the chemical agent to the docks didn't come until after the date of the gang rumble had already been decided. The canisters were not placed on the docks until the end of the day. It was all planned, J'onn. It had to be."

"Planned," J'onn repeated, crossing his arms over his chest. He gestured with his head back to the computer monitor. "Is there anything significant about the date you calculated as when you were exposed to the mutating agent?"

"Yeah." Richie pulled his knees up to his chest, chewing unhappily on his cookie. "My mother took me down to a local clinic to get a tetanus booster after I accidentally cut myself on a nail in the shed."

J'onn said something in Martian then, and while Richie didn't know the meaning in its entirety, the force and anger from which the words slipped from his mouth told him it was probably a curse.

"I hacked into the clinic's records," Richie said quietly. "Every kid who received a vaccination that day is currently either dead or dying of various and extremely rare cancers. It looks like I'm the only one who survived phase one of this little experiment. It was at that point that I realized we probably didn't have to worry about wildcards."

"That is unforgivable, that someone could do such a dreadful thing," J'onn said, his body tight with fury. "Have you discovered who is responsible?"

"Yes, but I can't prove it," Richie told him. "The records pertaining to the guilty party have been wiped clean. The few bits of information I was able to gather told me everything I needed to know, though. It was done under contract as a government experiment by Alva Industries."

"Alva?"

Richie nodded. He didn't like Edwin Alva, to put it mildly. The man exuded sliminess and evil, and he wasn't even subtle about it, like Lex Luthor. The worst thing about Edwin Alva was that he was motivated almost purely by greed, interested only in the money that came from that government contract. He didn't have designs on world domination, only desired to maintain his bottom line and make his stockholders happy. As far as evil rich businessmen went, Alva didn't even rate as a proper villain by contemporary standards.

"I should have known much sooner," Richie said, laughing a hollow laugh that contained no mirth. "How else could his men tracked me the way they did, kidnap me like that? They've known who I am all along because they created me. It took me getting experimented on in a secret facility offshore to find the pieces. I'm ashamed to admit how long it took me to pull them together."

"You were kidnapped by Alva?" J'onn asked, going to sit down next to Richie. "When was this?"

"Awhile ago," Richie said with a shrug. He wrapped his arms around his knees and hugged them to his chest. "I was supposed to go on a visit to my aunt's house in Central City. Backpack gave an alert just as I was finishing up something here and I went to investigate. The whole thing was a setup. Static rescued me several days later, but when I got home, nobody missed me. It turns out they'd somehow called my aunt in my mother's voice and told her I wasn't coming after all. Nobody was the wiser. They couldn't have orchestrated that if they didn't know every detail about me."

"Kidnapping, as well as the experiments you described using the vaccinations and the incident on the docks is illegal under every state and federal statute." J'onn's voice was dark and bitter. "If you could find the evidence, the Justice League could assist you in getting it to the proper authorities. Such blatant violations should be brought to the public eye."

"Nice, in theory, except that the proper authorities already know about it, J'onn," Richie said, sighing and resting his chin on the top of his knees. "That's why they call it a conspiracy. The government organization responsible for funding it is well entrenched in the highest levels of government. Even if I could gather enough evidence, everyone would be pointing fingers and covering their asses so well, no jury in the world could convict beyond a reasonable doubt."

"The corruption inherent in the people meant to serve the public good is highly disturbing." J'onn rubbed his chin thoughtfully, frowning deeply. "Would you happen to know which government organization was responsible for the funding?"

"Yeah, and you do, too," Richie replied. "This is why I didn't tell anybody. I don't need anybody flying off the handle, not now, not when everything is so tense. What's done cannot be undone. The best we can hope for is to keep it from happening again."

"CADMUS."

The word slipped off J'onn's tongue like a curse. Richie nodded miserably. It all made sense, didn't it? The organization was dedicated to the cause of having the potential to wipe out the Justice League if they ever proved to grow too powerful. You couldn't fight superheroes with conventional weapons. When Alva Industries inadvertently produced a mutating chemical agent, a chemical agent that allowed mutations to be focused in specific ways when applied correctly with things in the environment, they saw profit potential. A person could easily make an entire army of super powered individuals to fight the Justice League, which was just what the government was looking for.

Too bad about that tendency of those affected by the Bang Baby gas to turn completely psychotic.

"The situation seems to be more complex that we originally realized," J'onn said. "Is it possible CADMUS is responsible for the malfunctions in the Watchtower?"

Richie shook his head. "Not that I can see. They have a lot of resources and a lot of really good people on staff, so to speak, but even they don't have the ability to hack into my programming that way. CADMUS fancies itself as better than it actually is. Tracking their activities isn't that difficult. I'm sure The Question could tell you a great deal about it."

"I wasn't aware you and The Question were collaborating."

"We're not." Richie grinned broadly at J'onn. "I sorta hacked into his files. Don't tell him. I think if he knew I bypassed his encryption, it would break his heart."

J'onn gave a tiny smile back. "Your secret is safe with me," he said. "All of them."

"Thanks," Richie said sincerely, then gave a huge sigh, stretching his arms above his head and kicking his feet to the floor. He glanced at the table. "I guess, since we're all out of Oreo's now, I should get back to work. This problem isn't going to solve itself."

"No, it won't," J'onn agreed. "However, you are looking quite tired. Perhaps you do need, as you said, a vacation."

Richie laughed, standing up and stretching his back. "A mental vacation, J'onn, and you just gave me one. Superman is right. Oreo's are comfort food."

"I do not want you to push yourself too hard," J'onn insisted. "While the Watchtower is important, the fact that its currently inoperable doesn't mean the Justice League can't continue their work. It doesn't pose a danger to anyone when all of its power relays are disconnected."

"Now you're starting to sound like Virgil, man, and that worries me." Richie walked back over to his computer, closing out the windows displaying his research into the Bang Baby phenomenon, pulling open the Watchtower logs once again. "No, J'onn, the sooner I figure this out, the better I'll sleep at night. We need to find out who's responsible as soon as possible."

J'onn didn't argue with him, just nodded. Richie smiled to himself. He knew the Martian only suggested he give it a break so as to not make it look like he was pushing him too hard. J'onn wanted to know what was happening as badly as he did, and it probably only disturbed him a fraction as much as it disturbed Richie. Somebody poking around his programming felt like somebody poking around his guts - very unpleasant and far too personal.

"If you discover anything or require any assistance..." J'onn began.

"I'll contact you immediately," Richie promised him. "I'm not so full of myself not to scream for help when I need it. I won't keep you in the dark, J'onn. It's been too dark lately to begin with."

"Too true," J'onn said solemnly.

The door to the gas station flew open then, ironically filling the room with bright sunlight. Virgil strolled in, looking pleased with himself, but stopped short when he saw the Martian sitting on their couch next to an empty bag of Oreo's. Richie tried not to laugh as Virgil blinked several times at their visitor.

"Yo, did I miss something?" he asked, looking between Richie and J'onn with concern.

"Just updating J'onn on my status as far as the Watchtower is concerned," Richie said lightly, giving Virgil an easy smile. "Aren't you supposed to be mowing the lawn, bro?"

"Like any good enterprising American, I outsourced it to a neighbor kid for ten bucks," Virgil said cheerfully, "which means I get to kidnap you from here before you lose your mind."

"You said four hours," Richie admonished him lightly. "It's barely been one."

"Yeah, but I'm hungry now," Virgil countered. "All that outsourcing built me up a fierce appetite."

J'onn, who had been watching the exchanged, stood up then, a tiny, barely perceptible smile on his face. "Perhaps it's time I leave."

"Nah, man, it's cool," Virgil said, waving him off. "You can come with us. Don't even have to change your skin. We're pretty used to different-looking people wandering around the streets of Dakota."

Richie, knowing he Virgil as well as he did, was fully aware he was not going to be left alone to work while Virgil was in his mother hen mode. If last time was any indication, Virgil was likely to start singing O-Town's greatest hits at the top of his voice until Richie cracked and gave in. Rather than suffer through that, Richie set about shutting down his computer.

"Yeah, J'onn, why don't you come with us?" Richie agreed, turning off the monitor. "Antonio's on fifth has the best pizza in the country."

He was almost certain the Martian would decline, but J'onn nodded. His skin rippled, the green disappearing into a much more normal peach, a shock of brown hair on top of his head. He looked completely human, even if he still didn't blink quite enough.

"Very well," he said, putting his hands in the pockets of the inexplicable trench coat that had appeared around him. "Superman tells me that, too, is comfort food."

"Superman's got it right," Virgil said and he sounded relieved. Virgil didn't like it when the people around him were drowning in doom and gloom, Richie knew. Maybe he couldn't help with the Watchtower problem directly, but he could keep them all sane long enough to figure it out. For that kind of friendship, Richie was grateful. "Let's blow."

"Right." Richie followed Virgil out of the gas station, J'onn following close behind. "Hey, whose turn is it to cook dinner at your house tonight?"

"Pops," Virgil said, giving Richie a grin, then looked over his should at the Martian. "Want to come to dinner, too? You and Rich can shove your heads together on this after we get back from pizza and you can come chill at my house for awhile. Pops would probably be thrilled to meet you."

"I think I would like that very much," J'onn said and for the first time, his smile was broad and genuine.

"Cool," Virgil said, nodding happily that he got his way. "Welcome to Dakota. You'll finally get a chance to see how the other half lives down here. Just don't drink the water and you'll be fine, man."

Richie shared at laugh with Virgil at the old joke, the two of them doing their handshake. J'onn followed behind them, watching them as they joked and laughed. He already seemed more relaxed.

No, Richie thought, they weren't as experienced or maybe even as powerful as some of the other folks in the Justice League, but they had their own ways of doing things. He'd suspected for awhile that J'onn wanted to get more of a handle on the way they worked the whole superhero thing. Wonder Woman once accused him of taking comic books too seriously, that being a superhero really wasn't anything like those fictionalized serials Richie idolized.

Maybe that was true, Richie decided, but there was no reason why they couldn't try to make it as true as possible.

"I want pineapple," Richie said suddenly.

Virgil made a face at him. "Bro, that's disgusting. We're getting pepperoni."

"Do you know what pepperoni is made of?" Richie asked.

"No, and if you tell me, I'll kick your ass."

"I like pineapple," J'onn said.

"Yes!" Richie pumped his fist in the air. "Two to one, bro. You lose."

"All this and you guys didn't even save me any Oreo's." Virgil shook his head in mock-disgust. "Fine. We can get pineapple, but I won't forget this and I hold grudges."

"And you're paying, remember?"

Virgil flipped him off and Richie laughed.

To be continued...

_Next time on House Call:_

_"Guess Who's Coming to dinner?"_

_Robert Hawkins, tapped the side of his glass, looking at J'onn curiously. "So," he said, taking a sip of his soda. "Virgil tells me you're a Martian. That must be interesting."_

_"It has its moments."_


	2. Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?

House Call  
Chapter 2: Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?  
By: VincentM

"So you don't have any problems eating human food?"

J'onn paused in his examination of several of Richie's files, looking up at him with vague confusion. After pizza and a quick round of car racing on the old arcade game at the restaurant, Virgil beating them both, Richie and J'onn made their way back to the gas station, while Virgil went home to check on his outsourcing project. A few hours had passed, the conversation between himself and the alien lapsing into silence as they both tried to unravel the mystery of the Watchtower's hijacking. Richie noted, with some amusement, that J'onn hadn't expected his question, nor seemed quite sure how to answer it.

"I was just curious," Richie told him, hoping he didn't come off as rude. He didn't think J'onn was sensitive about his non-human status, but one could never be certain. "I mean, I can't eat Indian food without feeling like I'm dying, but at least that's from the same planet."

"A few things do not agree with me," J'onn replied after a moment, "but for the most part, I am able to imbibe human food without discomfort. Mars was much like Earth when I lived upon it, in terms of vegetation and diet, though we did not fry quite so many things."

"I wouldn't eat too many of the fried things if I were you," Richie suggested, grinning, but his mind was already dancing around with what J'onn said about Mars. "I suppose it makes sense, being in the same solar system and all. I wonder if it's possible certain organic entities from Mars made it to Earth over the centuries, perhaps by way of passing meteor or any other million things that can happen in the infinite probability of space. Or, maybe, there's a general pattern that must be maintained for any life to develop on any planet, but that wouldn't make sense since, from what I remember, there were quite a few species that didn't follow anything we have on Earth. Then again..."

Richie was somewhat aware he was rambling and that his words had vanished into a muddled stream of soft-spoken muttering, all while his hands flew across the keyboard of his laptop, rescued just a few short weeks ago from a dumpster outside Alva Industries. Gradually, the stream of conscious thought trailed off, at least verbally. In his mind, however, the thoughts kept coming, mingling easily with all the others already there.

Movement out of the corner of his eye stopped all those thoughts, or rather, banished them to a slightly lower level. J'onn had stood up and was rubbing the side of his head, staring at Richie with an unreadable expression. Richie blinked at him a few times.

"What?" he asked, not intending to be short, but when his mind went into overdrive, his verbal skills tended to fail him.

"Your thoughts are incredibly... complex," J'onn said, sitting back down, but he kept massaging the side of his head. "I did not mean to pry without your permission, but sometimes it is unavoidable."

Richie ducked his head in embarrassment. "Sorry," he said sincerely. "Sometimes I get carried away with myself. Static usually has to smack me upside the head to bring me back."

"It is not your fault," J'onn replied, but his eyes were narrowed in concentration. "What did you mean by, 'from what I remember'?"

This time, Richie was surprised at the unexpected question. Did he really say that out loud? Of course, he supposed it didn't matter if he'd said it out loud or not, since J'onn was a telepath.

"Oh, you know," Richie said, going for nonchalant, shrugging easily and turning his eyes back on his monitor. "That thing that happened."

"Thing?"

J'onn got to his feet once more, standing across from where Richie was sitting on the couch. Richie didn't look up, pretending to focus all his attention on the data in front of him. He wondered if J'onn knew he barely needed to focus five percent of his attention on one thing at a time, then remembered he probably shouldn't have thought that. Hanging around a telepath might be more difficult than he thought.

"Gear."

Richie sighed, finally raising his eyes. "You know, that thing. A little over a year ago?"

"Brainiac," J'onn said firmly.

"Yeah." Richie looked down again. If J'onn wanted to speak in one-word psuedo-sentances, then Richie could do it, too. "That."

"I did not believe you would retain those memories." J'onn hadn't moved at all.

Richie wished that J'onn had continued with the one-word psudeo-sentances. It would make this easier. Granted, he knew the man was an alien, but he should be able to pick up when somebody didn't want to talk about something by now. He'd been on Earth long enough.

"I retain memories of every single thing that has happened to me for the past two years and some change, J'onn," Richie said, giving the Martian a wry smile. "It's part of the curse of being a super genius with a perfect photographic memory."

J'onn nodded then, as if what Richie said confirmed something he suspected or simply as a gesture of understanding. "It must be a great burden."

"It's not so bad," Richie replied truthfully. "Brainiac, at its core, was nothing more than an archiving program gone wrong on an emotionless mission to record and store every piece of data about every culture it ever encountered. Of course, the programming flaw the Kryptonians missed meant that it came to the logical conclusion that _ending_ that culture would mean the mission could continue, since otherwise it would be forced to spend an eternity in one place and never complete the task it set out to do. Most of my memories of those cultures it encountered were happy ones, or at the very least interesting, up until the end there, when Brainiac blew them up."

Of course, that was the hard part - the sickening knowledge that at the point Brainiac arrived, all those cultures and histories simply _stopped_, when by all rights they should have continued. It was a terrible thing, at times, having the memories of these civilizations, to know all their triumphs and struggles, and to know that, in the end, none of it meant anything. Dead, gone, dust in the solar winds of the universe, they existed nowhere but in Richie's mind now.

Well, Richie's mind and Brainiac's backup servers hidden throughout the galaxy, but J'onn didn't need to know about that. They had enough to worries with the Watchtower. Richie didn't think Brainiac could start himself up again anytime soon, but if he did, he was pretty sure he could take care of it quickly enough on his own, without the assistance of the Justice League, assuming he wasn't overpowered and jacked into it again like an Intel Pentium chip.

"I don't want to talk about it," Richie said abruptly, hiding a shudder that ran down his spine.

"Very well." J'onn turned to go sit once again at Richie's desktop computer.

The way he said it, though, Richie had a feeling they'd be talking about it at some point in the future, whether he liked it or not - and Richie was almost certain he wouldn't like it.

* * *

Two frustrating and painfully awkward hours later, Richie and J'onn were making their way through the streets of Dakota in the direction of Virgil's house. They'd accomplished very little in terms of the Watchtower and, after the Brainiac discussion, Richie made sure all conversation more or less stopped. While fairly late in the day, the early summer sun still hung stubbornly in the sky, heating the concrete jungle around them to an almost unbearable level. 

Well, Richie thought it was unbearable. J'onn, harboring a human persona, didn't seem at all bothered by the heat, not a drop of sweat marring his skin. Richie wondered if it had something to do with the new form the shapeshifter currently enjoyed or perhaps had something to do with his alien physiology, but given where the food conversation ended up, Richie decided he could live without sating his curiosity.

"It's not much further," Richie said helpfully, wiping his forearm across his sweating brow. A car blew past them on the street, kicking up a cloud of litter and dust as it zoomed by. The breeze hitting his face as it passed was pleasant, exhaust filling his lungs not withstanding. "It's why I picked the gas station in the first place, since it was somewhat close to Virgil's house."

"It is a... unique place for a home base," J'onn remarked tactfully.

Richie snorted. "Yeah, so it's not a giant space station floating in space, or a massive cavern hidden underneath a mansion, or an elaborate home located in a pocket dimension just to the left of our own, but it works. Nobody comes in there, not usually. Occasionally we have to chase the homeless and the drug addicts away, but other than that, it's secure."

J'onn glanced at him sideways. "I was not criticizing."

"I know."

And Richie did know that. Still, every time he got in contact with the Flash, the man had some joke to make about the place. The rest of the Justice League heard about their choice of hideout, via him and probably a few of the original leaguers, and sometimes they would make off-the-cuff comments. Last time Richie checked, being a superhero didn't rest solely on one's status as a self-made millionaire or magical creature. Not everyone was blessed with a trust fund or immortality. But, the stigma held, as it always would, Richie thought, until he and Virgil managed to do something spectacular. As long as the stigma remained in place, Richie doubted any of the other Justice League members would take them seriously, with a few notable exceptions.

"Here we are," Richie said as the turned the corner, Virgil's house finally in sight. He led J'onn up the front walk and didn't bother to knock, fishing his key out of his pocket and letting himself in. He held the door open for J'onn, who was looking at him curiously. "I practically live here anyway. It's cool."

"I see," J'onn said, and he stepped inside.

Richie followed a few seconds later, sighing in relief as the cool air conditioning hit his face. It felt extraordinarily nice after the sweltering walk from the gas station. "V, Mr. H," he called, crossing through the living room. "We're here."

"Right on time."

Mr. Hawkins gave Richie a bright smile from where he stood at the stove, proudly wearing the novelty apron Virgil originally bought as a gag gift for Sharon. It read, in proud, tall letters, 'Don't like my cooking? Lower your standards!" The smell of red beans and rice, fried potatoes, and blackened chicken hovered in the air and Richie felt himself getting giddy. He loved it when Mr. Hawkins cooked.

"Mr. Hawkins, I'd like you to meet J'onn J'onzz," Richie said, gesturing to the Martian at his side while standing on his tip toes, trying to get a look at the homefries in the frying pan. "J'onn, this is Robert Hawkins, Virgil's dad."

"Nice to meet you, Mr. J'onzz," Robert said, wiping his hand on his apron and thrusting it out. J'onn shook it readily. "Virgil's told me quite a bit about you. I hope you like spicy food, since my daughter Sharon's not dining with us and I finally get a chance to make it. It's bound to burn your taste buds off."

"The honor is mine," J'onn said, a faint smile on his face, "and it smells very good."

"Old family recipe," Robert said cheerfully, then just as cheerfully added, "Richie, stop edging close to that stove before I hit you with the spatula. Go set the table."

"Yes, sir!" Richie gave Mr. Hawkins a mock-salute before walking over to the cupboard and pulling out the plates, cups, and silverware.

"Is there anything I can do to assist?" J'onn asked, looking just a tad unsure of himself. Richie supposed he didn't get to attend a lot of family dinners.

"Just make yourself comfortable," Robert told him, turning back to the potatoes. "You're a guest. Richie, on the other hand, is family and therefore cheap labor."

"Hey, now." Richie shook his head at Mr. Hawkins, who winked at him. The table set for four, Richie glanced toward the stairs, a look not missed by Mr. Hawkins.

"Why don't you go on up and see if you can drag that son of mine away from his game?" he suggested, gesturing up the staircase with his spatula. "The chicken's got about fifteen minutes to go."

"Yeah, right," Richie said, grinning at them both. "Last I heard, Virg was in the middle of level fifteen of 'The Legend of Sunn'. We might not see much of him for weeks."

Robert gave a tiny chuckle under his breath. "I'm sure the crystal cups will still be there after dinner." He grabbed a cup off the table, filling it with ice and water before sitting down at the table. He waved at J'onn to join him, which he did after only a moment's hesitation.

With one last look over his shoulder, Richie walked towards the stairs. They had to tell Mr. H about J'onn - how else would they explain a strange man joining them for dinner? Virgil's dad knowing about the whole superhero thing made things easier, sometimes, though not always. Richie's mother, on the other hand, hadn't brought it up since that fateful night. Richie wasn't sure if that was a good thing or not.

"So," Robert was saying as Richie went upstairs, "Virgil tells me you're a Martian. That must be interesting."

"It has its moments."

* * *

"Hey, bro," Richie said as he pushed open the door to Virgil's bedroom, not bothering to knock. "Your dad says dinner will be ready in a few. How goes the giant's castle?" 

"It's kicking. My. Ass," Virgil ground out between clenched teeth, his hands gripping his PlayStation 2 controller so tightly, his knuckled were turning white. He was sitting on the floor with his back against the edge of his bed, legs stretched out in front of him. "How goes the Watchtower?"

"Pretty much the same." Richie flopped down on the floor next to Virgil, resting his arm on one bent knee. "J'onn and I made zero progress on the whole thing. Talk about a wasted day."

Virgil groaned as his warrior of Sunn got his head chopped off by the unexpected swing of a wicked looking blade from off the top of the screen. He threw the controller down as the game told him he lost, for the umpteenth time, and that the world of Sunn would be plunged into darkness for another thousand years thanks to his failure. Rocking forward, Virgil stabbed the power button of the game console, shutting it off.

"Ditto, man." Virgil flexed his fingers to get the feeling back in them, slumping down and glancing over at Richie. "So, really no progress at all?"

"Guess it depends on how you rate progress," Richie said, frowning. "We managed to exclude a few more people and organizations, but we're not much closer to figuring out who's responsible. I think I'm developing a facial tic thanks to all this. Do you see a facial tic?"

Virgil squinted at Richie's face, then shook his head. "Nope, no ticking. You're safe, man."

"Good."

Richie closed his eyes with a sigh, leaning back easily against the bed. His head hurt, probably from eyestrain and stress, he reasoned. At times like this, he thought back on his life before becoming a super genius, before the Big Bang, before Brainiac, and the Justice League, and Ebon, and Hotstreak, and when Alva was nothing more than a name he occasionally heard on the news. Those were good times, when the most he and Virgil ever thought about superheroes centered around the debates they used to have about the storylines they ate up in their comic books. Yes, the good old days, when he didn't wear spandex under his clothes and didn't care about anything beyond not ticking off his dad and trying to maintain his B average in school.

But they couldn't go back to that, could they? Sure, there was that supposed cure those scientists developed and released into the environment, but it didn't cure Richie so much as nearly kill him. Like a nasty 'Flowers for Algernon' parody, he'd felt like he was dying when his intelligence started to leave him, killing off portions of his brain bit by bit - the final solution, so to speak, the final cover-up. Even after the second Bang, it took him quite a while to get back to the level before it, took time for his brain to rewire itself, make new connections to compensate for the damage. Richie knew they were lucky to find the cure for the cure before things got worse, otherwise, he probably would be drooling in a state home right now. He never thought he'd be grateful for Ebon for anything, but there you go.

A sharp poke in his side brought Richie back to the present and he blinked a few times, looking over at Virgil. His best friend poked him again, for emphasis. At least it wasn't a smack upside the head this time.

"Don't fall asleep, bro, otherwise I'm gonna have to eat all your chicken," Virgil said with a silly waggle of his eyebrows.

"I'm not falling asleep," Richie replied, a lie that was thrown out into the open when a yawn escaped him. "Okay, maybe I am, but can you blame me?"

"Yes." Virgil stood up, grabbing Richie's hand and tugging him to his feet. "You push yourself too hard, man. One of these days, I'm going to find you twitching on the gas station floor."

"Just throw a tarp over me, bro," Richie said, stretching his arms above his head, "and don't let Shenise trip over me when she takes my place."

Virgil made a face. "I like her, Rich, but I prefer you. You're much less annoying."

"Gee, thanks."

The two of them walked out of Virgil's room and down the stairs toward the kitchen. Some of Richie's exhaustion fled him in anticipation of the dinner he could smell wafting in their direction. When they walked in the kitchen, Mr. Hawkins was laughing and J'onn was his usual green. That made Richie feel good, to know that J'onn felt comfortable enough to exist as he normally did around Virgil's dad. Then again, Mr. Hawkins tended to have that effect on people, making them feel at ease.

"Any luck saving the world?" Robert asked Virgil as they came in.

"No, I just doomed it to another thousand years of darkness and torment," Virgil replied, grabbing his seat, "but they'll get over it."

"Good to know." Robert stood and grabbed the plates of food of the counter, moving them to the center of the table to allow them to serve themselves. "So, Mr. J'onzz was just telling me about the time the two of you ended up on that garbage freight in Central City last month. You left that part out when you told me about it."

Virgil nearly choked on the sip of soda he'd just taken, glaring over at J'onn. "A superhero has got to try to keep something of an image, thank you."

"Besides, it was all Supergirl's fault," Richie said, reaching for the chicken on the platter in front of him. "She's got to remember there are other people in the sky."

"I cannot argue with that," J'onn said, looking with interest down at the blackened chicken, fried potatoes, and red beans and rice on his plate. He touched his fork to it cautiously. "She has a tendency to lose sight of those around her in the heat of battle. Superman was once the same way, though, so I'm sure she will learn how to manage it at some point."

"Hope so." Richie took a bite of the chicken and felt his eyes start to water. It was spicy, painfully so, strong enough to clean out his sinuses and make him feel like he was dying. He dropped the chicken leg and grabbed his cup of water, drinking half of it in one gulp. Clearing his throat, Richie looked over at Mr. Hawkins, wiping his eyes. "Man, Mr. H, this is perfect!"

"Thank you, Richie," Mr. Hawkins replied, taking a bite of his own chicken, but not appearing to suffer any ill effects. "I don't know why Sharon doesn't like it."

J'onn put a piece of chicken in his mouth, chewing it thoughtfully. "Interesting."

"Not too hot for you, is it?" Virgil asked, grinning as he wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead, his chicken already nothing but bones.

"Not at all," J'onn told them, taking another piece. "I am simply surprised at that I can actually taste the flavor. Most Earth food seems quite bland to me."

"Martians must have tongues of steel," Richie said, taking the pitcher and refilling his water glass.

J'onn gave him a tiny smile, but said nothing more on the subject. The dinner conversation turned to mundane things, Mr. Hawkins bemoaning the upcoming fundraiser for the Community Center and his total lack of reliable volunteers, giving Richie and Virgil a pointed look. When J'onn started asking him about some of the programs he ran there, Virgil and Richie started talking about the game they were both stuck on, wondering if they'd perhaps missed something in the Orian Fields that they needed to get past the traps in the castle. All in all, dinner was going quite well, none of the uncomfortable awkwardness in the air Richie feared about before they arrived. After all, it wasn't every day a Martian ate at the table.

Just as they were heading toward dessert, ice cream and a sweet cobbler, the sound of a key rattling in the front door killed all conversation. They heard the door opening and closing, heard Sharon sigh as she threw her purse on the couch. Adam must have come with her, because they could hear the two of them talking.

"How was I supposed to know D was going to let it leak that I was back in town?" Adam was saying as they moved toward the kitchen. "He never tells me these things."

"You need a new agent, boy," Sharon told him, then walked into the kitchen and froze, taking in their guest.

Ah, so there was that awkwardness Richie had been missing. He was wondering when it would show up. Sharon was staring at J'onn with wide eyes, Adam coming up behind her and looking just as surprised. His arm was wrapped around her waist several times, but Richie saw it slacken slightly.

"Why is there a green guy in our kitchen?" Sharon asked shortly when it became apparent that nobody was going to say anything.

Richie exchanged a look with Virgil, not sure what to say. Even Mr. Hawkins seemed something at a loss. Only J'onn looked perfectly calm, standing up and giving Sharon a small bow.

"You must be Sharon Hawkins," he said politely, nodding at her. "My name is J'onn J'onzz, a founding member of the Justice League. Your father invited me over for dinner when I informed him that some of the members of the Justice League were willing to make an appearance at the upcoming fundraiser for the Freeman Community Center."

"Really?" Sharon asked, looking over at her father, who simply nodded. She grinned. "That's great! Wow, like Superman and the Green Lantern and the like?"

"As many volunteers as I can round up, yes," J'onn said.

Richie smothered a smile with his hand. Yes, he could just see J'onn asking for volunteers, could imagine the scene perfectly. He figured it would sound something to the effect of, 'You're going', and that would be the end of it. But, hey, Richie was busting his butt for the Justice League and he wasn't even a member. They could spend one Saturday afternoon helping to raise money for disadvantaged and mutated kids in Dakota.

"It's an honor to meet you," Adam said, extending his hand about five feet across the room to shake J'onn's. "Tell the Justice League we really appreciate it. I'm going to be performing there as well."

"Yes, it's going to be wonderful," Sharon said, smiling at her boyfriend, clearly all her irritation with him faded in light of the good news.

"And it'll raise a ton of money," Richie added, relieved.

What he didn't say was why, exactly, that made him so happy. Every penny the center raised on its own was another penny they didn't get from Alva Industries. Sure, the media thought that Alva was just doing it to improve his public image, but it wouldn't surprise Richie in the least to discover an ulterior motive. If the Justice League put in an appearance, maybe Alva would think twice before trying anything deceitful. Now, if only they could get his damn name off the gym.

Adam's head rose a few feet higher than it could have for a normal person, looking over all of them at the counter. "Hey, is that cobbler?"

"Yep," Robert said, grabbing two more chairs that were pushed up against the wall. "Why don't you two join us? Sounds like your plans ran into a snag."

Sharon took a seat, glaring at Adam once again. "You're getting a new agent."

"Yes, dear," Adam replied automatically, taking a seat next to her.

Richie sat back and smiled as the conversation picked up again. Three Bang Babies, two normal people, and a Martian, all sitting around the dinner table, enjoying peach cobbler and ice cream - very strange, but it worked. Maybe recent events in the last couple of years had made Richie's life a great deal more complicated, but for all the trials and tribulations that came with it, the good things that came about as a result outshined them all.

He caught a look at J'onn's face as he spooned his ice cream over the warm cobbler, smushing it all up together. The Martian looked vaguely happy, if a tiny bit shell-shocked. If something as simple as a family dinner surprised him, Richie figured the alien needed to get out of the Watchtower a little more. Being so separated from the real world, forgetting how to live in it - that alone was probably the most dangerous thing about the superheroes high above them. How could anybody look at the world for what it was if you forgot what it was actually like?

For all the annoyances it was causing, Richie was glad the Watchtower was out of commission.

Shoving his spoon back into his ice cream bowl, he blinked in surprise when it clanged against the hard Corningware. Frowning, he looked over at Virgil, who had a perfectly innocent expression his face that Richie might have believed, had there not been a tiny bit of Richie's ice cream at the corner of his mouth. With a shake of his head, Richie kicked him under the table.

* * *

"I'll be sure to send you any updates as I get them." 

Richie and J'onn were standing on the back porch of the Hawkins' residence. J'onn, once again no longer green, but much more human-like, was staring up at the dark sky above, looking toward the stars. He looked very much at peace.

Dinner had been an unmitigated success, even with the arrival of Sharon and Adam. The two of them were still camped out in the kitchen with Mr. Hawkins, talking about this and that. Apparently, Adam's agent made a quiet tip to some website that he would be back in town, as he was currently on tour, and they'd gotten swamped at the restaurant they picked. The paparazzi were still camped outside of Adam's apartment, so it looked like he would be spending the night at the Hawkins' residence - on the couch, of course.

"Thank you, Richard," J'onn said, his eyes still fixed on the sky above. "I will do the same for you, should I discover any information in regards to the current situation."

Richie followed the alien's gaze, wondering what he was seeing up in the sky. Few stars dotted the Dakota night sky, blotted out by the city lights and pollution around them. Scanning the darkness, Richie's eyes finally fell on one tiny speck of light, moving too fast to be a planet.

"The Watchtower," Richie murmured, watching the satellite roll across the sky, still shining from the reflection of the Earth, even though everything inside was dark.

"Yes," J'onn replied and when Richie looked at him, he saw a tiny smile quirk his lips. "As Flash would say, I can see my house from here."

Richie could see both of them, actually, Mars a small red dot just peaking through the haze above them. He didn't know much about J'onn's past - nobody did - but he suspected it was tragic. He wondered if it pained J'onn to see that little red dot in the sky, almost as much as he sounded pained at the temporary loss of the Watchtower.

"I'm curious," Richie began carefully. "Why did you decide to spend the whole day here? I mean, it was great having you and all and I think we covered a lot more ground together than alone, but you didn't have to stay for dinner or anything like that. I never would have guessed you'd agree to hang out with us."

"I wished to be sure of a few things," J'onn said quietly.

Richie knew then exactly what he meant. He didn't like it, found himself a little offended by it for a few seconds, but upon further reflection, he realized he couldn't blame the alien. The unsettling feeling that J'onn had been hidden, invisible, in the gas station much longer than he admitted settled around Richie's stomach.

"And are you sure now?" he asked, trying to keep the hurt out of his voice.

J'onn simply nodded. "Implicitly."

"Okay." Richie wasn't sure if he heard the unspoken apology in the Martian's voice correctly, but he decided to take it on merit. "Feel free to stop by anytime."

"I will, should the need arise," J'onn said.

"Need, shmeed." Richie waved J'onn off, forcing a smile on his face. "Just come on over. Maybe next time, you can come on patrol with us, get a feeling for types of people we deal with down here. It's not that easy, even though Virgil and I make it look that way, but that's just our mad skills coming through. Besides, aren't you coming the Saturday after next to wow the kids?"

"I am," J'onn said with a genuine smile on his face. "It should prove an enlightening experience. Virgil's father seems like a good, honest man."

Richie nodded firmly. "He is, which is rare."

"It is at that." J'onn pulled the fake trench coat around him, taking a few steps off the walk. He paused looking back at Richie. "Are you returning to your family home? I know you left your robot back at the gas station. I could walk with you, if you feel you need it."

"Without going into a long, boring explanation, suffice it to say, I am home, J'onn," Richie told him, jerking his thumb back in the direction of Virgil's house. "I'm spending the night, as usual."

J'onn gave him a curious look, but didn't ask anymore. Instead, he gave a small bow. "Goodnight, Richard, and good luck."

"Same to you, J'onn," he said, giving the alien a little wave. "Don't worry. I'll get you moved back into the Watchtower in no time at all."

"I am certain you will." With one more nod at Richie, J'onn walked away down the walk... and vanished.

A tiny breeze ruffled the top of Richie's hair and he knew the Martian was probably in flight above him, heading to who knows where. Maybe he was staying with Batman or Superman, or maybe he was heading up the coast to spend the day lounging under a beach umbrella with a fruity drink in hand. Richie found himself giggling rather stupidly at that ridiculous image as he walked back into the house.

Sharon, Adam, and Mr. Hawkins had moved to the living room, where they were sitting around the couches chatting. The TV was on, tuned to a news channel, upon which was airing some boring segment about some celebrity trial Richie couldn't care less about. Mr. Hawkins smiled at him as he walked past for the stairs.

"Did Mr. J'onzz get off all right?" he asked.

"Yep," Richie said, making a little 'zooming' motion with his hand. "He took off and it felt like he was flying north."

"I hope you didn't go all fan-boy on him," Sharon said in her most lecturing tone. "He's a very important individual and we don't need you offending him before the fundraiser."

One of these days, Richie was going to get on Virgil's case about telling Sharon the truth about Static, Gear, and everything in-between. She'd be pissed they kept it from her for so long, no doubt about that, but Richie had a feeling she'd get over it quick enough. He was almost positive Adam knew - how could he not? Still, it would make things easier on everybody.

"I assure you, Sharon, no fanboy-ing took place," he said, giving her a bright smile. "I was on my best behavior. I only asked him to autograph my back, which I'm never washing again. Goodnight!"

Richie dashed up the stairs as Sharon yelled at him, "Oh, you did not do that, boy! Don't you play me!"

Still laughing, Richie pushed open the door to Virgil's bedroom. Virgil, yawning and already changed into his pajamas, was sitting on the bed, flipping through a book. He raised an eyebrow as Richie closed the door.

"Something funny?" he asked, sounding sleepy.

"Just giving Sharon a hard time." Richie chuckled to himself as he went over to Virgil's closet, opening it up and pushing aside Virgil's clothes to the stack of his own he kept on the left side of the space.

Virgil smirked at him as he shucked off his clothes, changing into a t-shirt and a pair of boxes. "Be careful, man. She's liable to smack you around if you keep pushing it."

"You think I don't know that?"

Richie sank down on Virgil's bed, glancing at the book Virgil was reading - Chaucer's, 'Canterbury Tales', one of their assigned readings for the summer. Virgil looked like he'd already made quite a bit of headway into it. Richie hadn't even started it yet, but it wasn't like he couldn't read it in the space of an hour if he wanted to. It didn't mean he liked it.

"So, the green guy have anything interesting to say when you walked him out?" Virgil asked, throwing the book across the room where it almost landed on the desk, but not quite.

"Not really." Richie stretched out on the bed, his feet dangling off the side with his back to the wall. "I think he's homesick."

Virgil wrinkled his nose. "Somehow, I can't see him being homesick."

"It's subtle, but it's there." Richie yawned, stretching his arms above his head. "Oh, and he thought I was the one responsible behind the Watchtower malfunctioning, which was why he was hanging around the gas station probably most of the morning spying on me and why he decided to hang out with us all day."

Virgil, who had been in the process of trying to fluff the pillows and straighten his comforter, nearly fell off the bed. "Excuse me?" he asked, turning around. "What was that last part?"

"Remember earlier when we were joking that I was probably the only person who could do that to the Watchtower?" Richie prompted, reaching out a hand to steady Virgil before he tumbled to the floor.

"Yeah, but we were just kidding," Virgil said, regaining his balance. "Weren't we?"

"Maybe we were, but J'onn didn't think it was very funny." Richie rested his head on the wall, frowning. "Can't blame them, of course, but the lack of trust is just painful, bro. I mean, if I wanted to take out the Justice League, I could have just rigged up the Watchtower to explode or something."

"Man," Virgil said, shaking his head in disgust, "sometimes, those guys piss me off."

"They're just being careful," Richie replied, trying to pay the devil's advocate. He ran his tongue along his teeth and grimaced. "Bro, my mouth is growing fuzz that even the cayenne pepper couldn't kill. I'm gonna go get all minty fresh, okay?"

"Please do," Virgil said, waving his hand in front of his face.

Richie shoved him lightly and slid off the bed, heading toward the bathroom. Virgil wasn't over his righteous indignation, Richie knew. It was fairly obvious from the way he kept muttering to himself as Richie left the room, words like, 'stupid jerks', 'saved their asses so many times', 'after we went to the wire for them', barely audible in the tirade.

Smiling to himself, Richie pushed open the bathroom door, grabbing his toothbrush out of the holder where it was nestled next to Sharon and Virgil's. Covering it with paste, he thrust it into his mouth, scrubbing his pearly whites thoughtfully, staring at himself in the mirror. Taken the moment of relative peace and privacy for what it was, he mused on the day, taking stock of it.

It was nice, having Virgil there to be indignant on his behalf, to stand up for him. Nobody knew him better and nobody probably ever would. Even if the whole Justice League looked at him warily for the rest of his life, so long as Virgil stood by his side, Richie couldn't be bothered by it. The moment Virgil started questioning his motives or sanity, Richie knew that would be a sign he should pay more attention to himself.

It was extraordinarily comforting, Richie thought as he spit into the sink, to have somebody like that in his life. He knew how rare and special it was, how few people had others they could connect with in this world. From the little he'd seen of the new Justice League members up in the Watchtower, friends like that were clearly in short supply.

Shortly after the second Bang, with Virgil getting a feel for his new, expanded powers and how they worked, the Justice League offered him a place by their side. Richie pretty much expected it - Virgil was a force to reckon with these days, and there was little doubt he would only get better. The same offer was not extended to Richie in any way, shape, or form, regardless of the fact he designed their current base of operations for them.

Virgil turned them down point blank without even needing to think about it. He gave them a litany of excuses - he was too busy with school, his Pops would not approve of him going up into space on a regular basis or being called to emergencies around the world, that Dakota was heating up again with Bang Baby activity after the cure released into the environment started to destabilize and people found themselves transforming again, but this time slightly more psychotic, and so on. They were all very good, reasonable, logical reasons, but Richie knew that wasn't why Virgil said no.

Both of them or neither - those were the terms. Most of the members of the Justice League, with the exception of Batman, didn't trust Richie for a long list of rationales. Too smart, the risk that he could go psychotic, the danger of his association with Brainiac, no matter how forced, (an objection loudly and frequently raised by the Green Lantern Corp), on and on it went. Again, Richie couldn't argue that they weren't all very good, reasonable, logical reasons for them to be wary, but it wasn't good enough for Virgil. All for one and one for all, or something to that effect.

And, damn, did that make him feel good.

Wiping his face with the hand towel, Richie left the bathroom, going back to Virgil's room. Virgil had once again retrieved his book and was laying down on the bed, his side pressed against the wall, squinting at the pages in front of him. Richie shook his head at him, crawling onto the bed beside him.

"Admit it, bro," Richie said, tapping the side of his head. "You need reading glasses."

"No, I don't," Virgil said, but his scrunched up eyes said differently.

Richie shrugged, taking off his own glasses and setting them on the night stand, sinking down into the bed and pulling the covers up over him. "Whatever, man. Just don't bitch to me when you get another headache."

Virgil snorted stubbornly and reached over Richie to drop the book on the floor, taking the opportunity to tap him lightly on the side of the head. "My eyes are tired, that's all. Too many video games and do we remember when I had to fight Hotstreak all by myself this morning?"

"Sure, sure." Richie yawned and rolled over on his side away from the wall, nestling his head in the pillow and closing his eyes. "Whatever you have to tell yourself, bro."

"I'm just tired." Virgil reached over him again and flipped off the lamp on the nightstand and Richie could feel him sinking down into the bed, taking up more space than was really fair.

A sudden flash of a future, sixty years away, struck Richie then, the two of them still arguing over Virgil's need of reading glasses and a hearing aid as they sat around grumpy and white-haired in bathrobes. Maybe they'd have a few cats running around, yelling at small children to get off their lawn in-between reliving their glory days back when their spandex fit better. Richie snorted into his pillow, his body shaking with laughter.

"What?" Virgil asked, very close to whining.

"Nothing," Richie choked out through his snickering.

Virgil bopped him on the shoulder with a closed fist. "Stop wigging out on me, bro, and go to sleep."

"Yes, dear."

He heard Virgil sigh as he started giggling again. Richie didn't stop laughing even as Virgil threw out his arm, draping it over face in an attempt to get him to quiet down. "Man, you are so weird."

Richie said nothing, only smiled and pushed Virgil's arm down and away.

* * *

At two o'clock in the morning, Richie found himself awake. It wasn't a slow, gradual return to consciousness. Rather, Richie instantly snapped alert, his eyes going wide, hand trying to reach up to slap the back of his neck. He wasn't successful in that action because Virgil, in true Virgil-form, had managed to spread out across the entire bed, half his body flung out over Richie's back, while Richie's own leg was dangling to the floor. 

Something didn't feel right. A dull pain throbbed under the skin at the base of his neck, radiating uncomfortably from someplace sub-dermal. Carefully extracting his arm from where it was trapped under Virgil, Richie gently pushed him aside so as not to wake him, sitting up and touching his fingers to the source of his discomfort.

His skin burned hot in that one place. He knew what lay under that patch of deadened skin, knew what was causing the pain, but he hadn't felt it in a long while. Frowning, Richie looked out the window, rubbing the skin irritably.

Closing his eyes, he threw his mind across the city, interfacing with Backpack many blocks away back in the gas station. He'd left the robot there to finish up some mundane data organizing tasks so Richie could examine the results in the morning. The connection wasn't as good from such a long distance, but the pain in his neck was Backpack's way of alerting him to something going on around the robot, something the robot didn't like.

Scrunching his forehead in concentration, Richie struggled to access its data logs. Backpack had switched from his data entry to high-alert mode and, Richie could tell, the robot was so concerned, it had gone into one of its many hiding places inside the gas station, as Richie programmed it to do. Trying to override that protective programming so he could get some idea of what bugged the robot so badly proved difficult with the distance between them, but finally, he did it.

"No..." Body going rigid, Richie's eyes flew open. Turning around, he shook Virgil hard, waking him up. "Wake up, man. Wake up right now!"

"Mmm... what?" Virgil blinked several times, sitting up and looking around the room in confusion. One look at Richie's panicked face shook off any remaining sleep. "What is it?" Virgil asked, already moving to stand up. "What's wrong?"

"The gas station," Richie said, jumping to his feet and making a mad grab for his clothes. "It's on fire."

To be continued...

A/N: Hehehehehehehe...


	3. Burnout

A/N: Thanks to everybody who has reviewed! I really appreciate it.

House Call  
Chapter Three: Burnout  
By: VincentM

"Hell."

The smell of burnt things made Richie's nose twitch as he gingerly picked his way through the rubble around him. Whips of smoke rose into the air as a few hot spots still smoldered. The couch, so painstakingly dragged down several city blocks, without the use of powers, by the two of them the previous summer, was blackened and covered in ash, sharp metal springs poking up through the ruined fabric. The mini-fridge, the coffee table, their spare TV and PlayStation, the police radio, everything they carefully collected over the past two years or so was gone. Melted plastic and metal gave off acrid scents, their toxic smoke still hanging in the air, and Richie was grateful his helmet blocked off most of it. He didn't think he could stomach it otherwise.

They put the fire out fairly easily, thanks to Virgil tapping into an underground water main and dragging it to the surface. The gas station itself, with its thick concrete walls, held onto its structure, the overall building itself sound, if a little singed. However, those thick concrete walls acted like an oven, superheating the building and destroying everything inside. Nothing was salvageable.

Amazing how, in the space of no less than ten minutes, everything they worked so hard for went up in a puff of smoke, so easily, so quick.

Richie leaned down and picked up the charred remains of his new laptop, holding it gingerly between two gloved fingers. He sighed at it, sighed at the way the plastic had melted together, forever sealing it shut. With a grunt, he threw it aside. None of Richie's other computers or scientific equipment survived. Even the blackboard he scribbled his thoughts on had collapsed into several pieces, resembling nothing more than used up firewood.

"How could this happen?"

Richie looked up. Virgil was standing in the center of the room, looking at a complete loss, consumed by a sense of shock Richie himself echoed. The destruction was devastating in its totality.

Standing up, not having any words of comfort to offer his friend in his own pit of loss, Richie brushed his hands off on his legs. It didn't make them any cleaner, as every bit of him seemed to be covered in the oily ash, but it was something to do. Unable to cope with his own feelings, Richie pushed them aside, letting the very large, analytical part of his mind take over.

His eyes scanned the gas station, taking in the burn pattern, getting an intrinsic feeling for where the fire started and how it spread. He sniffed the air, trying to categorize the scents as best he could. Not missing a single detail, committing it to perfect memory, he let his brain go over all of it, trying to sort through it like a puzzle. It only took him a few minutes to come to a conclusion.

"Arson," he said with a definitive nod. "The fire was set intentionally. Looks like it started over in my lab area. The work's too good to be done by an amateur - I'd say we're looking at a professional."

Virgil stared at him with deadened eyes. "Why?"

"I don't know," Richie said honestly, "but I have a feeling. I'll know more as soon as I find Backpack."

Virgil blinked a few times, staring around the rubble. "Is it under here somewhere? Do we need to dig?"

"No, it got out." Richie had felt the little robot leaving the gas station to preserve itself as he and Virgil were on route. By the end, the connection between Richie and his robot was almost spastic, its internal components heated and unable to function. He didn't know if Backpack had been permanently damaged or simply shut itself off to cool down. "I'll be able to find it as soon as it reboots, assuming the person who set the fire didn't steal it."

Virgil shuddered, kicking apart a smoldering pile. "Be good if they did steal it, so we could find out who did this," he muttered, glaring at the damage, clearly offended. "You don't think it had something to do with the Watchtower, do you?"

"Maybe," Richie said with a shrug, not planning on making any definitive statements until he uncovered more evidence. Someone associated with the Justice League, a renegade Bang Baby angry with them, or just some yahoo with too much time on their hands - anything was possible.

"Well, if it did, we are totally sending the Justice League a bill for the repairs," Virgil said, cracking a weak smile. "I hope they got insurance, man, because we're taking them to the cleaners."

The joke wasn't very good, but it did manage to bust up some of the tension. Richie grinned back at Virgil, folding three fingers to his palm and putting his thumb by his ear with his pinkie by his mouth, mimicking a phone. "Hello, State Farm? We'd like to make a claim."

Snorting a tiny laugh, Virgil shook his head, stepping over a few burned things to examine what used to be their television. "We don't have any way to contact them, now, do we?"

"Just my computer at my house," Richie said, "but since nobody's home at the Watchtower, that's not going to help. I guess we could hop a bus to Metropolis and jump off a building yelling, 'Help, Superman, help!' That might get their attention."

"Man, they need a hotline." Virgil sighed, shoving his hands in the pockets of his jacket. "It doesn't matter. We've never called them to help us before and we're not really members of their team. We can take care of this on our own, like we always do."

Richie nodded. "Lone wolves, fighting a harsh, solo battle against the Bang Baby menace and all that entails," he said loftily. Then, he gasped and slapped his hand on the back of his neck, wincing. "Ow."

"What?" Virgil said, hurrying up to him with concern. "Something get burned?"

"No." Richie gritted his teeth and closed his eyes. "It's Backpack. It's trying to restart, but it's having some trouble. Damn, that hurts!"

"I _told_ you not to integrate those leftover bits and pieces from Brainiac." Virgil came up behind Richie, putting his hands on his shoulders and using his thumbs to massage the hot, angry patch of skin on the back of Richie's neck.

Richie sighed, relaxing as Virgil rubbed the pain away. "It seemed a waste not to use them. It's not like the implants are going anywhere. Besides, it's the only way to hook up with Backpack on such an exact level. Without it, this whole place would have burned to the ground."

"I still don't think it's a good idea," Virgil grumbled.

"Yeah, yeah." Richie squeezed his eyes shut, trying to sort out the randomized pieces of broken code Backpack threw in his direction. It didn't make a lot of sense - the robot was clearly damaged, but not damaged enough not to try to seek out its creator as Richie programmed it to do in situations where it got lost. After a few moments, it became clear it couldn't come to him, so Richie tried accessing its sensors, both visual and otherwise. Eventually, the robot complied and Richie got the sense of darkness and a familiar chemical composition.

"The tire yard," he said at last. "It hid itself somewhere in the tire yard. It can't move, though. I think it's too damaged to coordinate the movement of the legs, either that or it's just stuck."

"And I'm guessing with it acting up the way it is, it would not be a good idea for me to just try to grab it with my powers." Virgil stepped back and grabbed Richie's arm, leading him out of the gas station to the tire yard adjacent to it. "The last thing I want to do is create a feedback loop that'll fry your brain."

"You know, I'd really prefer it if you didn't do that," Richie told him.

"So, we do it the old fashioned way."

The two of them stood, staring at the piles and piles of tires stacked up around them. Backpack could be simply hiding behind one of those piles, or, more likely, Richie thought, hidden inside. Doing it the old fashioned way, as Virgil said, was going to take a long, long time.

"Well, I didn't want to sleep tonight anyway," Richie said, rolling his shoulders a few times.

"Yeah, me neither." Cracking his knuckles, Virgil hopped up on the first pile of tires, looking down into it. "Here, Backpack. Come here, you stupid hunk of junk. Static's got a nice outlet back at his house for you to plug into."

Richie smiled at his friend, chuckling under his breath as he climbed up on a different pile.

* * *

The early morning sunlight had just started to peak over the horizon when Virgil and Richie got back to the Hawkins' residence. They'd chucked off their costumes and Virgil, declaring that he smelled like a potato kept too long in the oven, went to take a shower. Richie had moved several things off of Virgil's desk, putting Backpack on top. 

One of its many legs waved sadly at him, incredibly damaged. The heat in the gas station had melted its external casing some before it escaped, the robot covered in a thin film of slick ash. It's electronic eye barely functioned, cracked from the high temperatures. Resting his hand on top of it, Richie could feel tiny vibrations as its whisper-soft fan tried its hardest to cool off the still too hot internal components.

It wasn't a total loss, but it was damn close. Richie looked sadly at the robot, feeling as though someone had hurt his child. It amounted to the same thing - Backpack was such an extension of himself, such an integral part of his being, it might as well be his kid.

Still, the tiny bit of data it was throwing into Richie's mind told him parts of it still worked okay. The hard drive seemed to be intact. While he'd have to rebuild the shell, he thought he could salvage the heart of the machine, if he had his tools, which he didn't, since they'd melted to his workstation.

Turning the robot over on its back, Richie held down the button to manually shut it off. While he knew it was irrational, the stray bits of code and processing, so disorganized and confused, made Richie feel like the machine was suffering greatly. It couldn't suffer, of course, since it had no way to feel pain or even a consciousness, but that didn't change the impression of agony. It made him sick to his stomach.

The robot finally shut down, Richie grabbed the screwdriver Virgil kept in his desk drawer, trying to crack the robot open like an egg. The seams had fused together a bit and he couldn't get the leverage needed to pop it open, not with a simple screwdriver. As much as Richie and Virgil liked to declare they didn't need help, Richie honestly didn't know how he was going to do this. It took him over a year to gather the components and tools necessary to create his inventions, most of them found through sheer luck while dumpster diving behind the industrial complexes around town. Aside from his data about the Watchtower on the machine, clues to who destroyed their headquarters no doubt also existed inside the ruined robot. He needed to be able to access it, but he couldn't, not with what little tools they still possessed.

Dropping the screwdriver back on the desk, Richie collapsed in Virgil's chair, rubbing his hand across his forehead. No, he couldn't do this alone, not without any resources at his disposal. It simply wasn't feasible.

"Help, Superman, help," Richie muttered under his breath, feeling a pang of hopelessness and loss for the first time.

The door to Virgil's room suddenly swung open. Richie turned around and saw Adam's head coming in through the door before the rest of his body. His nose was wrinkled and he had a distasteful expression on his face.

"Damn, what did you two burn up here?" he asked, then his eyes fell on Backpack and went wide. "Woah."

Too tired to mess with it anymore, Richie gave Adam a level look. "I'm Gear."

"Yeah, I know. What do you think I am, stupid?" Adam walked into the room, frowning down at the robot. "What the hell happened?"

"Someone set fire to the gas station," Richie told him.

Adam's jaw fell open in shock. "What? Why?"

"We don't know." Richie tapped Backpack with his fist. "It probably does, but I can't access it right now with it so damaged. If I could get it open, I could probably save the hard drive, but all my tools are gone. It's not like I can hop on the web and order new ones, not with my ten bucks a week allowance."

"Yeah, guess not." Adam reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet, opening it up and throwing Richie his platinum American Express card. "Think that'll cut it?"

Richie stared down at the card, holding it gingerly between two fingers. Looking back up at Adam, he opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out. He tried again, and the funny squeaking noise did nothing for his rep', but there was nothing for it.

"I just signed a contract worth, well, a lot," Adam told him, reaching down a ruffling Richie's hair. "I don't think you'll burn me out. 'Sides, it's the least I can do for you and Virgil helping me out back in the day."

"Adam." Richie swallowed heavily, not quite over his surprise. "Thank you."

"Don't get all mushy on me, man. It's embarrassing," Adam replied, looking uncomfortable. "Just don't go to town and, hey, if you can get Virgil to stop dissing on Sharon's cooking for a month, we'll call it even."

"What?" Maybe it was the pretty shininess of the platinum card in his hands, but Richie didn't feel like his brain was quite up to snuff at the moment.

"When Virgil's disses Sharon, I hear about it," Adam said, sighing. "Loudly and often. It makes her more unhappy that she lets on. When she's unhappy, I'm unhappy. So, get him to lay off, will you?"

Richie nodded distractedly. "Don't worry, man. I'll keep him occupied."

"I'll bet," Adam said in a sotto voice.

"Hmm?" Richie wasn't really listening. Instead, he was thinking about all the things he could buy with Adam's card - not over the top, of course, like he asked, but just things he needed to replace in his lab. These days, the thought of getting his hands on a good, used inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometer was almost more exciting than buying a new gaming console. "What was that?"

"Never mind," Adam replied, smirking. "I'm going to go wake up Sharon."

"Have fun." Richie gave Adam a knowing smile as he left the room, then thought of something. "Hey, does Sharon know?" he asked, tapping Backpack. "You know, about us?"

"Of course she does," Adam said with an easy shrug. "She's not stupid either."

Richie frowned. "Why hasn't she said anything?"

"She's waiting for Virgil to come clean first." Adam shook his head at the silliness of it all. "She thinks he ought to tell her and when he does, man, is he gonna get an earful. Right now, we got us a pool going, so if you wanna get Virgil to confess, aim for around mid-June, okay? I got a lot riding on it."

"Man, you two are crazy," Richie said with a laugh, then thought about his green spandex uniform currently hidden under Virgil's bed. "Though, I guess I shouldn't be talking."

"I wouldn't," Adam said, then waved and left the room.

Shaking his head, Richie booted up Virgil's computer, waiting patiently while the Window's logo spun around on the screen. It took far too long for Richie's patience, but at last, the computer decided it was ready for Richie to enter Virgil's password. Opening up the web browser, Richie quickly typed in the address for one of his favorite scientific equipment sites and started browsing with giddy happiness.

Virgil walked in a few minutes later, throwing his towel on the bed. "I just saw Adam going into Sharon's room," he said, coming over to sit by Richie. "I think I'm scarred for life." He glanced at the computer monitor and the pages Richie was currently browsing, snorting. "Trying to make yourself depressed, man?"

"Nope," Richie said, waving the credit card in Virgil's face. "We got the means and the greens, my man. I'll have my lab up and running as fast as they can ship this stuff to me."

Virgil snatched the credit card out of his hand, looking down at it as if he couldn't believe it was real. "Why did he give this to you?"

"I told him about the gas station and he figures this'll make us all squared away as far as past good deeds go," Richie told him, adding a few things from the first website to his shopping cart and moving on to the next category.

"So, he knows?"

"Well, yeah." Richie frowned as he read their shipping policies. It was going to take a couple days to get everything he needed - maybe as much as a week. Then there remained the question of where he was going to store it. Quite a bit of it was big in size and Virgil's room was cluttered enough. After the incident with the chemicals that should have been stable but weren't, Richie wasn't going to even contemplate using his parents' garage.

"How come nobody tells me these things?"

Richie pulled his focus away from the screen to give Virgil a level look. "It's not a matter of telling you so much as you not picking up on it, bro. No offense."

"Great." Virgil threw his hands in the air, standing up. "Next you're gonna tell me that Sharon's known for ages and just decided not to say anything."

Choosing not to answer that, Richie turned back to the computer, picking up the credit card Virgil dropped and entering the numbers swiftly into appropriate fields on the page. "Man, this is so exciting," Richie said as he clicked the confirmation button, his order zooming away into cyberspace. "In a week or so, everything I'll need to redo the lab will be waiting for me at that UPS Store box we got. I can't wait."

"I'm glad one of us is having a good day." Virgil walked over to his closet, grabbing a shirt and dragging it on. "Why do I get the feeling I'll be the one mucking out the gas station while you're in happy la-la land with all your new toys saving the world?"

"Because you're psychic?" Richie suggested with a waggle of his eyebrows, laughing when Virgil gave him the bird. "Don't worry, bro. I won't leave you hanging. I mean, I do have a week before all this stuff gets here."

"Yeah, but I got a feeling it's gonna take longer than a week." Virgil sighed. "When we find out who did this, man, are they gonna pay." He started moving toward his door. "I think Pops is in the kitchen. I'm gonna go see if he has any suggestions on what we should do."

"Grab me something to eat while you're down there, will you?" Richie asked, turning back to the computer.

"Sure."

Richie heard Virgil leave the room and he sighed, some of his good mood fading. Virgil was clearly very upset about the gas station, understandably. Richie was upset, too. He didn't like it when Virgil was unhappy, though, since he was usually the optimistic one of the group. If he felt down in the dumps, it didn't bode well for either of them.

"We'll figure it out and everything will go back to normal," he promised the air, patting Backpack's powerless shell with his hand.

One of the nicer things about Mr. Hawkins learning about their secret identities meant that the gas station, for all intensive purposes, was in their name. Well, more accurately, it was in Mr. Hawkins' name. He didn't like the idea of them, 'squatting', as he put it. So, a second mortgage later, along with a promise from Richie and Virgil that they would pay him back, the gas station became the property of the Freeman Community Center. He told the board of directors it was mostly a property purchase for future expansion one day and that 'acquiring the abandoned gas station would help serve the community in the long run'. He didn't lie, exactly. Static and Gear could be considered a force designed to help serve the community in the long run, when it came right down to it.

They hadn't been as careful as they were now about hiding the gas station as their base of operations. Shenise managed to find it just by following them one day. Young and stupid, maybe arrogant, they didn't think that anyone would want to find it, that anyone cared. They should have known better, but they didn't.

Now, though, they were much more careful. Bored on a lazy Sunday back the previous winter, Richie did a little excavating under the gas station. He found, to his surprise, a natural cave structure in the bedrock attached to an abandoned sewer main. For some reason, it tickled Virgil silly when he told him about it, made him start ranting about the future and something Richie was going to build for him, once they won the lottery.

With the underground access, Richie and Virgil could come and go from the gas station as they pleased, with no one the wiser. A tiny hacking expedition later and the abandoned sewer main was stricken from all public records. No, other than the occasional homeless person trying to break in, no problems came up since.

But, Richie thought with some consternation, maybe their earlier carelessness led to the destruction of their own Headquarters, someone finding out in those early days and waiting until just now to act on it.

Finished with his online shopping spree, Richie did a quick check of his e-mail. Groaning, he set about deleting about fifty pieces of spam, then paused. Nestled between a letter from an Arabian Prince asking for his assistance to retrieve a small fortune and an advertisement for discount drugs from Canada was a message with an unusual from address - The Daily Planet. Frowning, he double-clicked it.

* * *

"... some shovels in the garage, and do you think the building safe? I don't want you boys to get crushed if it collapses around your heads." 

Richie pushed open the door to the kitchen, seeing Mr. Hawkins and Virgil sitting around the table, breakfast things spread out in front of them. Virgil was poking his oatmeal with a spoon, stirring in the ridiculous amount of sugar he'd poured into it, his free hand on his chin and his expression tight and drawn. He'd opened his mouth to reply to his father's question, but changed his mind when he spotted Richie coming in.

"Hey, man, your oatmeal's got three seconds on it in the microwave," he said, gesturing to it with his head, "and tell Pops the gas station isn't going to collapse."

"No, the structure of the building is still sound, Mr. H," Richie said, going to retrieve his oatmeal as the microwave beeped at him. He took out the hot bowl, juggling it between his fingers as he carried it over to the table. "I checked as soon as we put the fire out. I wouldn't even think of going in there if I thought it was dangerous."

Robert nodded. "That's good enough for me," he said, standing up to go get the orange juice from the refrigerator. He patted Virgil's slumped shoulder as he passed. "I was just telling Virgil there some stuff in the garage you boys can use to start cleaning up the place. Any idea who was responsible? Are you two in any danger?"

"No and I hope not." Richie dug his spoon into his oatmeal and took a bite, preferring it plain. He nodded his thanks at Mr. Hawkins when he passed him a glass of orange juice. "I guess time will tell."

"I don't like hearing that," Robert admonished. "This is getting too dangerous."

"It's always dangerous, Pops," Virgil countered, stabbing his oatmeal with his spoon, which didn't hurt it so much as make it slop over the side of his bowl. "It's all part of being superheroes."

"We'll be fine, Mr. H," Richie promised him. "We're not alone. In fact, I just got an e-mail from a friend of ours in Metropolis."

"You what?" Virgil looked up at Richie in surprise and, maybe, guarded hope. "What did he say?"

"Well, mostly, I think he was asking about my progress on that little project I'm working on. I think." Richie grinned, remembering the e-mail, disguised as an inquiry about some story he was supposedly writing, trying to hide what he was really asking, since The Daily Planet e-mail was probably monitored to some extent to prevent abuse. "He was trying to be subtle, but I don't think he does subtle very well. Mostly, it was just confusing, but I'm pretty sure that's what he was asking about."

"Did you e-mail him back?"

"Yeah," Richie said with a nod. "I told him that I'd hit a snag that our friend with the green thumb might want to know about, if he knew where to find him. Hopefully, he'll get it."

Richie didn't have incredibly high hopes about that. Superman was more of a, 'hit first, ask questions later' type of person, usually as subtle as a brick in the face. How he managed to hide his secret identity so long was something of a mystery. It took Richie only about ten minutes to piece it together one afternoon. Lois Lane must be incredibly stupid or, as Richie thought more likely, was pulling a Sharon - waiting for Superman to come clean to her before calling him on it.

"That's good, I guess," Virgil said, not looking quite as happy as he did a few seconds ago. "I hate to ask for help, man. I mean, they already think we're stupid kids who don't know what we're doing."

"There's no shame in asking for help when it's needed," Robert told his son sincerely, sounding relieved. He probably didn't think they knew what they were doing, either. "They asked Richie for help because they needed it. Fair's fair, son."

"Yeah, I know," Virgil said with a sigh. "That doesn't mean I have to like it."

Richie pushed his empty oatmeal bowl away, standing up. "Well, I think I'm going to go take a shower and then maybe we can see about setting up a temporary base of operations. I have a couple ideas."

"How about a nap?" Robert suggested carefully. "You two look like you're about to fall over."

"No sleep for the wicked, Mr. H," Richie told him cheerfully. Actually, he didn't feel that tired yet, running on pure adrenaline. By that afternoon, though, he'd probably collapse. "There's time to sleep later."

"If you say so," Robert said, but he sounded skeptical.

* * *

"What do you think?" 

Virgil was frowning, rubbing his chin. "Do you really want me to answer that honestly?"

"Okay, it's not the Taj Mahal, but you felt the same way about the gas station when you first saw it."

The empty warehouse near the docks wasn't nearly as nice as the gas station when they first made it their headquarters, but given the general disrepair of the place originally, that wasn't saying much for the building Richie had dragged Virgil to see. The entire block was more or less an empty wasteland - even the gangs, homeless, and drug addicts gave the place a wide breadth. The place possessed an eerie quality to it, large slats of concrete lying flat against the ground where buildings once stood, as though the very structures they once supported were lifted up and carried away.

Technically, that was somewhat true. While not lifted up and carried, per se, those buildings had been converted to digital energy and absorbed by Brainiac a little over a year ago. Richie knew the area well, tagging along as Brainiac's host as it tried to figure out the best place for its base of operations. The building from which Brainiac's giant ship burst into the sky was visible even from where Richie and Virgil were standing, a pile of dusty rubble nobody claimed or bothered cleaning up.

"This place gives me the creeps," Virgil said, shoving his hands into his pockets. "I almost lost... Doesn't it bother you, too?"

"Not really," Richie lied through his teeth, hefting the heavy duffel bag over his arm. Yes, this whole part of town gave him the heebie-jeebies, bringing to the surface memories Richie would rather remain buried. He tended to make excuses to avoid it during their patrol, not that they ever needed to come over here, since nobody else did. "It'll be a good spot to set up a temporary HQ until we get the gas station back in order. I need to put all that scientific equipment I ordered somewhere."

"Well, if you wanna be all logical about it." Virgil grumbled something under his breath, then took a few quick steps forward, pushing open the door to the warehouse and going inside.

Richie followed, wiping the sweat from his brow. The only bad part about setting up here, he thought, was the heat. These old metal buildings tended to turn into ovens in the summer sun. He suspected he could get the air conditioning working again and there was a generator on the roof, if Virgil could be persuaded to juice it up.

Quite a bit of stuff remained in the warehouse. Long tables, chairs, conveyor belts, raw materials, bits of papers, even a pair of glasses littered the place, almost like ghostly remnants of the activity that once transpired there. It looked like the owners were in a rush to leave town. After the collapse of the manufacturing industry about a decade ago, Richie didn't doubt that was true. A great number of corporations, plants, and tech jobs ran away so fast, he could almost imagine he could still see the clouds of dust on the roads out of the city. Shortly after that economic collapse, the gang riot helped to make things even worse.

Several financial forecasters and others in the industry long since declared Dakota a dying city. The fishing around the docks started to go bad after the Big Bang, because for some reason, there just wasn't much of a market for six-eyed fish. The Bang Babies roaming the streets made the large companies and chain stores wary to set up shop. Even those that survived the depression and the gang riot ten years ago were starting to pack up and leave, Bang Baby insurance at an all time high, the city simply not profitable enough anymore. Jobs atrophied away, even as the number entering the workforce increased, the crime rate rising as a result, the whole city getting an almost Gotham-like feeling of despair settling around it.

It kind of made Richie's heart hurt to know, with chilling certainty, that he'd probably be stuck in this rotting town for the rest of his life.

"Ugh." Virgil turned back to Richie, wrinkling his nose. "Bro, what is that smell?"

"This used to be a smelting plant," Richie explained, trying to pretend the smell didn't bother him. Walking over to a long table, Richie opened up his duffel bag and drew out Backpack, placing the deactivated and slightly melted robot on the surface. "Some sulfates were used in production. That odor tends to kinda linger, but open a few windows, add some curtains and a few throw rugs, and it'll be just like home."

"A home that smells like rotten eggs," Virgil replied, kicking at a pile of scrap metal the previous owners left behind, "or a home where my sister cooks."

"Oh, yeah," Richie said, snapping his fingers. "Adam said you gotta lay off Sharon's cooking for at least a month in repayment for all the money he loaned us."

Virgil turned and gave Richie a level look. "My day keeps getting better and better," he said, blowing out a slow sigh between his lips. "Well, I guess it's better than nothing."

"That's the sprit." Richie slapped Virgil on the back enthusiastically. "Once we get some of this junk out of here, it'll be great."

Virgil frowned. "I'm going to be stuck cleaning up this place, too, aren't I."

It wasn't a question so much as a statement, so Richie decided not to reply, instead going over to examine one of the conveyor belts.

* * *

The ice cream dripped down his fingers, melting faster than Richie could possibly eat it. He gave it a valiant try, though, taking a big bite off the top of the cone. Unfortunately, the results proved disastrous. 

"Ow, brain freeze!" he yelled, slapping his hand to his head.

Virgil, who sensibly bought his in cup form, chuckled at his misfortune. "And you're the super genius?"

"That's what it says on my resume," Richie replied with a sheepish smile, massaging his forehead.

After a couple of hours of poking around the new Abandoned Warehouse of Solitude, as Virgil dubbed it, both of them decided they'd had enough of the heat and the sulfur smell. A call for ice cream was risen by Richie, seconded by Virgil, and they made record time heading back in the direction of downtown. Other than sticky fingers and an aching head, Richie thought it was the best decision they'd made all day.

The city streets were predictably crowded for mid-day, shoppers, people on their lunch breaks, and teenagers out of school and lacking anything better to do filling the sidewalks and dodging cars as they tried to dash across busy intersections. After all, in downtown Dakota, a red light was interpreted as more of a suggestion than anything else. The hustle and bustle, along with the occasional shove here and there, would make it difficult for the someone not used to city living to get around, but Richie and Virgil were experts, navigating through the crowd with an innate sense of how to move that came only with a relative lifetime spent walking these very streets.

"Wanna hit the comic shop?" Virgil practically had to shout the question, as the two of them were temporarily separated in the crowd.

"Why not?" Richie said when they found their way side by side again, popping what remained of his ice cream cone into his mouth, finishing it off with a satisfying crunch. "It's not like I can do anything for our friends up north without my stuff."

Virgil nodded, tossing his empty cup into a trashcan on the street. "I hear the one on 5th's got a display for the new Omega Man story line starting up next month. It's supposed to be cool."

"Is that the one by Peter..."

Richie trailed off as a loud 'boom' echoed down the street, the people around them letting out shouts and hitting the ground out of reflexes well bred of living in Dakota. Scanning the horizon, he saw a plume of smoke rising into the sky about two streets over. On the wind, he could smell things burning as well as hear an extremely telling laugh.

"Oh, give me a break," Virgil groaned, rolling his eyes. "I just turned him over to the authorities yesterday morning! No way he already managed to escape!"

"Sounds like it, though," Richie said with a frown, squinting through the smoke flowing past them. "If nothing else, I guess we can always rely on Francis to break out of prison."

"I swear, if that idiot spent half as much energy on cracking a book now and then, he'd have a Ph.D. by now."

The two of them ducked into a nearby ally, Richie standing guard at the entrance while Virgil shucked off his civilian clothes. Tying his mask around his face, he gave his clothes to Richie, who folded them up and hid them under his arm. Virgil tossed out his saucer, electrifying it with a careless wave of his hand.

"Guess I'm flying solo this time," Virgil said, and he didn't sound very happy about it.

"You'll do fine," Richie said optimistically. "Without my things, I'm nothing more than a guy too smart for his own good with ice cream on his fingers. Besides, you've done it before."

"Yeah, but I'm not used to it anymore." He sighed, grudgingly hopping up on his disc. "You at least gonna be on the ground?"

Richie nodded. "Sure," he said, holding up his Shock Vox. "I still got your back, man. Just like old times."

Virgil looked grim. "Just don't forget to watch your own back while you're down there. I have trouble seeing it from up above."

"No problem. Now, get going before we lose half of downtown."

Waiting until Virgil disappeared high over the top of the building, Richie dashed to the front of the ally, looking left and right to make sure no one had seen them together. He didn't have much to worry about. Most of the citizens of Dakota knew by now that when Static was moving one way, they should move in the other.

Richie slipped into the crowd unnoticed, pushing through in the opposite direction of the throng. Clinging tight to the walls of the buildings, so as not to get pushed into the street, Richie continued moving toward the smoke and ash, occasionally reaching up to scrub at his watering eyes. On a whim, he tied Virgil's t-shirt around his face like a mask, mostly with the intention to keep from inhaling the smoke, but also as an effort to keep his identity somewhat hidden. Ebon came too close to figuring out their friendship that one winter day. He didn't want it to happen again.

It had been awhile since he'd served justice in this capacity. Ever since the inception of Gear, Richie didn't spend much time on the ground. He never felt more useful than when up by Static's side, fighting together against the Bang Babies and other villains that threatened them. But, he never devalued his efforts prior to Gear, never regretted what he did as Static's partner even before he started wearing green spandex under his clothes.

For all his body could absorb ridiculous amount of electricity, nothing changed the fact that, with all that bright light arching through the air, coupled with the distractions of whoever or whatever he was fighting at the time, Virgil had some trouble seeing what he was doing. Add in the problem with having to fight in three-dimensions and his best friend tended to put himself unintentionally at risk more often than not, leaving himself exposed to attack in such a way that only years of hardened experience could correct, assuming he lived that long. Recognizing this almost instantly, either from years of playing video games or his gradual emergence as Gear, Richie found an easy niche to fit into while Virgil got to dress up in the costume and get all the glory.

He watched Virgil's back. Hiding in the shadows of the alley or trees before Gear, Richie stayed out of sight, watching the battle unfold, Shock Vox clutched tightly in hand. From an observer's viewpoint, with little risk of danger, he was able to warn Virgil about impending attacks on his unprotected sides, guide him where to go when Ebon blinded him or Hotstreak filled the air with smoke.

Even with Gear, Richie still essentially did just that for Virgil. His used non-lethal distance weapons, was usually able to stay out of the thick of battle and coordinate their movements to make their fighting technique as flawless as if they'd been doing it as long as Superman. Maybe the media and the Justice League didn't understand his contribution, but Virgil did, and that was all that mattered to Richie. He could tell, in fact, as he set himself up behind a dumpster and watched Virgil confront Hotstreak in a pre-battle war of words, that Virgil certainly understood his part in their team and sincerely missed his presence. He looked a little off-balance.

"It's cool, man," Richie whispered in the Shock Vox as Hotstreak finished saying some unflattering about Virgil's mother. "Check it - he's tired. Probably wasted all his energy trying to break out of lockdown and didn't have the sense to rest up a bit before creating havoc. That means he's gonna be sloppy. Just keep your cool, bro, and don't let him get to you."

From the distance, Richie could see Virgil touch his ear. "Did you hear what he just said about my mother?" he asked with disgust.

"Yeah, but he doesn't even know your mom, obviously," Richie told him with a tiny smile. "He's just pulling trash out of his ass. Let it go and keep focused. This shouldn't take long."

Virgil snorted. "Yeah, says you."

Before Richie could reply, though, Francis must have decided he'd had enough of the trash talking and threw a fireball straight at Virgil's head. Virgil dodged that easy, as Richie knew he would. For as fast as Francis no doubt seemed to be going in a lay person's eyes, Richie could tell Virgil was starting to realize just how slow his adversary was reacting compared to usual.

"Billboard on your right," Richie warned and Virgil turned sharply so he wouldn't run into it. A few things were burning in the general vicinity. If Virgil's eyes were half as itchy and watery as Richie's were at the moment, he knew his friend was essentially flying blind. "Building behind you, about five feet. Goes up several stories. He's coming up on your left."

Richie kept up the commentary, purely observational, with no suggestions as to how Virgil should react. Virgil knew what to do and Richie yelling at him to do stuff would only throw him off. He just needed Richie's eyes, even with their nearly legally blind without the glasses status.

It didn't take long. After about ten minutes of trading volleys, insults, and empty cars, the battle ended with Francis knocked out but otherwise unhurt. Virgil had already set about cleaning up the mess from the fight, putting out fires, righting things upturned in the ruckus, even moving some litter to a nearby dumpster. The cops on the scene were waving and giving their thanks, even as the Bang Baby Containment Unit loaded Francis up on a stretcher for the second time in as many days.

"Try to hold on to him this time, okay, guys?" Virgil called to the BBCU, masking his profound irritation with humor that fooled everyone except for Richie. He soared up into the sky, heading west, then, remembering, he stopped. This time, Virgil's voice came through Richie's Shock Vox. "Uh, man? Where should I be going?"

"Umm..." Richie scanned the streets. No good. Now that the fight had ended, the gawkers had arrived, standing on tiptoes in an attempt to see anything unusual. For the citizens of Dakota, a fight between Static and a Bang Baby was more exciting than Major League Baseball, once it was over and the danger gone. "I guess head over to the new place. It'll take me awhile to get over there on foot, so I suppose you'll have to find someway to amuse yourself until I can get you your clothes. Maybe try to find the source of that sulfur smell?"

"I knew it!" Virgil declared over their connection, but he was flying east toward the docks anyway. "I knew I would be stuck cleaning! The old place, the new place - What am I, a maid? Buy me a black and white dress and a feather duster and we'll call it a day."

"Bro, you don't have the legs to pull that off," Richie said, snorting in amusement and pulling Virgil's shirt off from around his face. "Trust me on that."

"Yeah, yeah." Virgil sighed. "Okay, bro, I'll see you at the new place. Thanks for the assist back there. Couldn't do it without you."

"Ah, it's nothing, man," Richie replied, unable to help smiling a little. "See you in a few."

Jabbing his thumb on the button along the side of the Shock Vox, Richie slipped it back in his pocket and started walking down the street toward the warehouse district, allowing himself to revel in a bit of pride. It might not seem like much, standing out of the way and warning Virgil about landmarks he was about to smash into, but it made a difference. It was nice to be recognized for something not necessarily super genius related.

With the fight over, downtown returned to business as usual. Richie stopped at a vendor and bought a couple of hot dogs, decking one of them out the way he knew Virgil liked it. Fighting always drained him and made him hungry. They didn't have their mini-fridge or their snacks anymore. He'd probably be rolling on the floor in hunger by the time Richie got there, or at the very least, whining about it.

Taking a bit of his own hot dog, he thought about what he could do with the warehouse. The HQ was temporary, no doubt about that - it was too far from his and Virgil's house, too far from downtown to be really effective. Still, they needed to make it workable until they could finish cleaning up the gas station. Plus, those raw materials left behind might come in useful.

_GEAR!_

"OW!" Richie yelped, nearly dropping his hot dog as a the mental call of his name screamed through his mind. The mental voice sounded panicked and scared. He wondered, as he winced, if emotions were hard to hide while using telepathy. Scrunching up his eyes, he thought as hard as he could, _Yes, J'onn. I'm here. You don't have to yell, man. Where are you?_

_I am at your headquarters. What happened?_

_Long story, _Richie thought grimly, then quickly sent away a picture of the warehouse district and the location of their new place. _That's where we're setting up for the time being. I'm on my way now. Static is probably already there._

_Then I will see you shortly._

The mental connection between himself and the Martian broke and Richie groaned, rubbing his head. "That was totally not cool," he muttered to himself, picking up the pace.

* * *

"... so then we get over there and the whole place is going up in smoke. Man, talk about a ruined evening." 

Richie pushed open the door to the warehouse, seeing Virgil standing in the middle of the room, his power arching out around him as he held several long metal tables up in the air, shaking them to get the dust of and reorganizing them in a neater fashion. J'onn J'onzz, Superman, as well as the Green Lantern stood around him, watching as he casually moved the extremely heavy furniture around them room without any apparent effort. Richie rolled his eyes a tiny bit, knowing Virgil was showing off, but happy to let him have at it.

"Hey," he called, closing the door behind him. "I got you a hotdog, bro."

"Great! I'm starving!" Virgil dropped the tables with a clang, practically running up to Richie and grabbing the hot dog out of his hand. He grinned down at it. "Just like I like it, man, thanks," he said, then proceeded to eat it in about four bites.

"Static was just informing us of your unfortunate trouble," J'onn said, looking over at Richie.

"You boys have any idea who was responsible?" asked Green Lantern.

Richie vaguely wondered why John Stewart had tagged along. Then, he realized, when he told Superman to contact, 'our friend with the green thumb', he probably wasn't specific enough, so he know doubt grabbed anybody green and a friend in the Justice League just to be safe. Hiding a laugh with a well-timed cough, Richie tossed Virgil his clothes, walking up to the group. They all looked a little worried.

"Not a clue," Richie said flippantly, trying to keep things upbeat. It wouldn't do to get all depressed and hopeless about the situation, wouldn't be helpful to think dark thoughts and allow angst to overcome them. Sure, there was the possibly they were in danger, but what else was new? They'd deal with things as they came and, sooner or later, everything would be back to normal. Walking over to the long table, Richie tugged away a dirty tarp he'd found earlier that morning, revealing the damaged Backpack to the Justice League members present. "I'm sure it knows, but as you can see, I won't be able to get anything off of it for a good long while. We ordered some replacement equipment, but I probably won't see if for at least a week."

Green Lantern walked over to the robot, picking it up and turning it over in his hands, examining it. "Looks like it got fried. That fire must have burned hot. You're sure it wasn't an accident?"

"Positive," Richie said with a nod. "It was too neat. Besides, I found evidence of an accelerant that I know wasn't with my other chemicals."

"Why go to all that trouble?" Superman asked, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. "If they wanted information about the Watchtower, they could have just stolen your computers and left the place alone."

"You're assuming that's what they wanted," Virgil intoned. He'd jumped up on one of the tables and was sitting on his hands, waving his feet back and forth lazily. "We do have enemies of our own, man."

"Anyway, all of my computers, or what was left of them, were still there," Richie added, taking Backpack back from Lantern and setting it back down gingerly. "It wouldn't have done anybody any good to steal them - I have them so encrypted, they'd never figure it out. Also, I have them set up so if somebody does try to bust into my encryption, I'll know about it. I have a security system in place and I know for a fact it wasn't breached."

"How can you be positive?" J'onn asked, looking down at Backpack. "Without your robot acting as a go between, how would you know that nobody had attempted to access your files?"

Richie opened his mouth, then closed it, sharing a look with Virgil. Did the Justice League really need to know all their secrets? They might react badly if they found out the truth. Virgil shrugged at him and Richie knew as well as he did that they weren't going to get away with keeping the information to themselves this time. The darkening expression on Green Lantern's face told them that much.

"Might as well come clean, bro," Virgil told him with a half-shrug.

Sighing, Richie turned to look at all three of them. "Don't freak out," he said by way of preamble, holding up his hands. "I sorta... incorporated Brainiac's implants into all of my hardware. While it's more a more rudimentary connection in my computers as compared to Backpack, I'd still know right away if somebody tried to mess with anything, Backpack or no. I'm hardwired into my own systems."

"What?" Lantern practically yelled. "Are you insane? Do you have any idea how dangerous that is? Brainiac nearly destroyed the world, not to mention you!"

"Believe me, I remember," Richie replied shortly, crossing his arms over his chest and narrowing his eyes. "Brainiac's gone, man. It seemed stupid not to use what it left behind."

"It's stupid to use them at all," Superman said, and he seemed downright offended. Considering that Brainiac was responsible for the destruction of his home world, Richie couldn't blame him, but at the same time, he didn't feel like it was Superman's choice to make. "You should have told us that you still could access those implants."

Superman's eyes narrowed and Richie got the distinct impression he was being x-rayed. He didn't like that. At all.

"Cut it out!" Richie cried out, grabbing a piece of piping off the ground and throwing it straight at Superman's head, knowing it wouldn't hurt him. "Man, you cannot x-ray people without asking! It's rude!"

Superman shook his head, rubbing the spot where the pipe smacked into him, probably not out of pain, but out of reflex. "You don't have any clue as to what Brainiac's capable of!"

"The hell I don't!" Richie started to yell, but J'onn stepped between them, a calming presence in the rising storm.

"Enough," he said simply, his voice quiet, yet somehow strong enough to convince everyone to comply. He turned to Richie, his eyes unreadable. "Gear, I trust that you know what you are doing, so we will speak no more of this. The important thing is to discover who is responsible not only for the problems with the Watchtower, but more pressing, who is responsible for the destruction of your headquarters."

Shooting one final glare at Superman, Richie walked back over to Backpack, tapping it with his fist. "Like I said, J'onn, there's nothing I can do about it until I get my tools, and there's a waiting period, even with UPS." He threw the tarp over the robot, hiding it from view.

"There are other places where you can make use of the equipment you need," J'onn replied, looking thoughtful.

Jumping to conclusions was something of a problem for Richie, even before his exposure to the Bang Baby mutating agent. However, since his intelligence started growing by leaps and bounds, his conclusions tended to be accurate more often than not. Looking up at J'onn, then glancing over at Virgil, Richie shook his head.

"I can't do that," he told the Martian. "I'm needed here. Besides, my mom is cool, but my dad is not. I haven't been home in almost three days and while she won't care, I'm sure my dad's gonna have something to say about it."

"Time may not be on our side," J'onn said, understanding that Richie knew what he was referring to. "The sooner we can discover the truth, the sooner we can take steps to rectify the situation."

"I'm sorry, but I missed something," Virgil said, jumping off the table. "Would someone like to clarify for the non-super geniuses and non-telepaths in the room?"

Richie looked over at Virgil, his expression grim. "J'onn wants me to go to Gotham to use Batman's stuff to try to fix Backpack."

"Oh." Virgil scratched his cheek. "Well, I guess that makes sense."

"It's not safe for you to go out fighting on your own," Richie reminded him. "It could take me a couple of days to get Backpack working again. You know how tough some of our friends here in town have gotten since that failed cure those scientists put out in the environment."

"I can stay in town and help out," Lantern offered. "It's not like I have anything better to do."

Richie didn't say that Dakota might not be happy having the Green Lantern around, especially after last time. True, that hadn't actually been Green Lantern, but no matter how much the paper tried to clarify that, doubts still lingered in the minds of the citizens. Still, it was probably the best they could hope for and he felt better knowing Virgil had someone on his side to help out.

"But what about my dad?" Richie asked, giving Virgil a knowing look.

"He'll probably flip out no matter what you do, man," Virgil said sympathetically, but not without a tinge of anger in his voice. "I'll see if Pops can help out with damage control. Maybe we can tell him we're going on a fishing trip or something. J'onn's right. The sooner you get Backpack fixed, the sooner we can resume business as usual, bro."

"Okay," Richie said, but he couldn't help feeling doubt. "If my dad explodes and grounds me for life, though, I'm blaming all of y'all."

"It's settled then," J'onn said.

He didn't seem surprised at Richie's last statement, but he couldn't help but notice the curious looks being cast at him by Green Lantern and Superman. J'onn knew, of course, about Richie's problems with his father after that fateful little trip he took through his mind to check for remnants of Brainiac, but Richie didn't think it was really anybody else's business. The last thing he wanted was a bunch of pissed off superheroes leaping to his defense like he was a helpless kid. Richie had it tough dealing with his father, sure, but a lot of kids had it a lot worse. At least he didn't hit him.

"Fine." Richie picked up the duffel bag from that morning, shoving Backpack inside. "Let me swing by my house and then I'll see about how I'm going to get to Gotham."

"Superman can fly you there," J'onn stated blandly.

Richie balked. "What? No! The dude just x-rayed some very personal parts of me without permission. I'm not going to hang around his neck like Lois Lane while he flies me up the coast."

J'onn gave him a look that booked no room for argument. Groaning, Richie shouldered his duffel bag, glaring at Superman, who glared right back. Yeah, this was going to be a fun trip.

"Whatever." Richie kicked moodily at the ground, adjusting the duffel bag so it didn't cut into his neck. "Meet me in my 'hood. I'll be behind the pizza place on tenth street. Static can tell you how to get there."

"Good," J'onn said with a nod and Richie realized he kinda hated him at the moment.

As he started to leave, Virgil fell into step by his side, and they left the warehouse behind, taking a few moments of privacy from the rest of the Justice League before Richie left. Virgil was quiet in a way that meant he was thinking very hard about something. Richie had a pretty good idea of what that something was.

"You be careful up there," Virgil told him as the paused about ten feet away from the warehouse. "Gotham's a pit, man."

"Believe me, I know." Richie sighed, squinting up into the sunlight. "Thanks for covering for me, bro. I know it ain't gonna be easy. My dad is seriously gonna be pissed."

"He'll get over it."

Virgil thrust out his fist and Richie met it easily, doing a quick version of their handshake. At the end, instead of pulling away, Virgil grabbed his hand and tugged him forward, catching him up in manly hug that involved him slapping his back twice. Richie snorted a laugh at the silliness of it all.

"It'll only be a for a few days, bro," he promised, stepping back.

Virgil shrugged. "I know, but I also know that whenever we get separated, you have a tendency to get kidnapped and stuff. Don't make me fly all the way up to Gotham to save your pasty ass."

"I think it'll be cool," Richie said with a roll of his eyes. "I'll be surrounded by the world's finest - Batman glaring at me on one side, Superman glaring at me on the other."

Some of Virgil's good humor faded. "He shouldn't have said that," he said, his expression darkening. "You know, about you not knowing what Brainiac is capable of. That wasn't right, man."

"He doesn't know," Richie said patiently.

That was true. Nobody knew, aside from Virgil and now J'onn, that Richie possessed all of Brainiac's memories, that he knew the intimate details of every genocide the rogue program committed. Richie hadn't even intended to let Virgil in on the fact, not wanting his friend to worry or start feeling all guilty again for his part in not noticing Richie's body and mind had been hijacked for three weeks. However, a dozen times waking up screaming in Virgil's bed pretty much forced Richie to come clean about everything he did in fact remember.

"Yeah, well, then he should keep his mouth shut about stuff he doesn't understand," Virgil told him, his tone clipped. "If he gives you any trouble on the flight there and back, let me know. I'll electrify his cape so badly, it'll be tangled around his legs for weeks."

Richie laughed at the mental image that produced. It felt good to laugh. Stepping forward, he grabbed Virgil in a hug not quite as manly.

"Thanks, man," he said, grinning. "What would I do without you?"

"Go insane and build doomsday devices to take over the world?" Virgil said, stepping out of the hug and raising his eyebrows.

"Probably." Richie turned away with a sigh, giving one final wave to Virgil. "See you in a few days, man. Stay safe."

"Ditto, bro."

Leaving the warehouse district behind, Richie walked toward his home, his mind consumed with thoughts. Well, more thoughts than usual, anyway. Running his fingers through his hair, Richie sighed.

"I miss life not being complicated," he said to no one at all, picking up the pace to a half-jog.

To be continued...

A/N: Will Virgil actually ruin Superman's cape with more static than is allowed by law? Will Richie's father really explode and how gross will that be? Will Alfred make Richie tuna fish sandwiches and offer fatherly advice? How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood? Answers to all these questions and less in the next chapter of "House Call"! Stay tuned and thanks for reading!


	4. It's Not Paranoia If

House Call  
Chapter Four: It's Not Paranoia If...  
By: VincentM

"Mom?"

Richie closed the front door behind him as he walked into his house, stomping his feet a few times on the welcome mat for good measure. The house was silent - no television blaring, no voices raised in fetid anger, not even the sound of the air conditioner humming. Richie wiped a bead of sweat off his brow. To save on energy costs, his mother kept the thermostat at 85 in the summer, at 64 in the winter - yet another good reason to hang out at Virgil's house.

"Mom?" Richie repeated, wandering in toward the kitchen. His mother's car was in the driveway, so he knew she was around somewhere. Walking through the entryway to the kitchen, he saw a cup of cold coffee left alone on the counter, papers spread out across the table. "You home?"

"In the laundry room, Richie!" came his mother's voice from inside the pantry next to the garage, where they kept the washer and dryer. She grunted as she came around the corner, balancing a heavy basket of clean clothes on her hip.

Richie hurried forward. "Here, let me," he said, taking the basket from her as she nodded her thanks. He set the basket down on a clean spot on the table, automatically reaching in and grabbing a shirt, folding it neatly. "Got a lot of work to do?" he asked, gesturing with a nod of his head down at the papers.

"Always." His mother gave him an enigmatic smile, taking up a dishtowel and patting the sweat from her face. "The firm has me editing a few proposals that need to go out on Monday. George, bastard that he is, thrust it on me as I was leaving the office yesterday."

"How nice of him," Richie said with a roll of his eyes, grabbing a handful of mismatched socks and trying to pair them up.

"I'm glad you're home, though." Maggie sighed, automatically reaching for and taking a sip of her coffee, making a sour face when she realized how tepid it became in her absence. Shrugging, she went to the freezer and grabbed a handful of ice cubes, tossing them inside her mug. "With all this work I'm stuck doing, I'm not going to get any of the chores done this weekend. Your father had to run down to the hardware store to buy a replacement hose for the lawn mower, which broke down again. You know how upset that gets him."

"Oh," Richie replied, staring down at the socks in his hands and grimacing. "Yeah, Mom, about that..."

His mother, who had just sat down and dragged a thick file in front of her, raised her head at Richie's tone, a disapproving look on her face. "Do not tell me you made other plans, young man," she said sharply. "I haven't seen you in three days."

"I know and I'm sorry," Richie told her apologetically, dropping the socks. "Things have just... gotten really complicated in the last couple of days. You remember that thing I had to fix? About a week ago?"

"Yes, I think I would remember my son teleporting into my kitchen when he returned," she replied, narrowing her eyes. "You told me you fixed that."

"Well, I fixed that, but not the rest of it," Richie said patiently. "So, I had to go back up a few days ago to try to fix the root cause and..."

"Wait, wait, wait." Maggie stood up, holding her hand out to stall Richie from speaking any further. "You went into outer space again? Without telling me?"

Richie opened his mouth, then closed it, swallowing heavily. "I didn't think it would be a problem."

"You thought wrong, mister," Maggie said, waggling a finger at him. "I wouldn't let you take a road trip out of the city without telling me first. I certainly don't want you going into outer space without at least letting me know about it! What if we had some kind of family emergency? How would I contact you?"

"Well..." Richie trailed off, frowning. He'd never considered that. "I might be able to hook you up with some kind of communicator, should the need arise."

"That is not the point!" Maggie sighed, taking off her glasses and rubbing her eyes. "You're not even seventeen years old, Richie. You're still a minor. I understand that the Justice League is cool and all, but you can't just disappear like that without telling me. Whatever tragedies might befall this crazy world of ours, you're still a child. I can't believe those adults allowed you to just go up into space all willy-nilly without even an ounce of hesitation that they should confirm it with your parents first. The school wouldn't even let you go on that field trip to the museum unless we signed a permission slip. What kind of organization are they running up there?"

Richie suddenly got a mental image of J'onn sending home a permission slip for his mother to sign before he engaged in any superheroing. 'Please allow Richie Foley, a.k.a. Gear, to save the world today. Snacks will be provided, so there's no need to pack a lunch.' It made him smile, but a huff from his mother smothered that smile quick enough.

"You're right," Richie said, knowing better than to argue with her. "I should have told you. I'm sorry that I didn't. It was thoughtless of me. But, this is really, really important, Mom."

"Everything's important when you're sixteen," she said with a shake of her head, sitting back down and taking a long sip of her iced coffee. She gestured for Richie to sit down. "So, tell me what's going on."

"Well, it's like this." Richie took a deep breath and sat down, pushing the laundry basket across the table so he could see his mother's face. "The Watchtower was being hacked into by an unknown assailant and I went up there to try to fix the problem, but I couldn't, so I had the Justice League evacuate and shut the whole place down since there's a risk the giant gun on top of it could be used to blow up something here on terra firma. J'onn J'onzz, who's a Martian, showed up the day before last to help me work on the problem at our hideout, but we didn't get any closer to finding it. So, after he left Virgil's house after dinner, I decided just to sleep over there, since it was so late. Last night, somebody burned down our hideout, so I'm not able to continue my work on the Watchtower here, so Superman wants to fly me to Gotham so I can use Batman's equipment to get back to work. And that's it."

His mother, who'd raised her coffee mug to take another sip, paused mid-movement, staring at Richie like he'd grown an extra head. He reached up his hand to check when she didn't say anything - one never knew with Dakota. Then, she put her coffee mug down heavily on the table with a 'thunk'.

"Mr. Hawkins had a Martian over for dinner?" Maggie asked, blinking rapidly.

"Mom!" Richie sighed, slapping his forehead. "That's not the point. The point is, I need to go to Gotham. I promise I'll be safe and I'm planning to try to get back as quickly as possible. So can I go? Please?"

"Oh, I don't know, Richie." Maggie stood up, taking her coffee mug over to the sink to rinse it out. "I'm not sure I'm comfortable with the idea of an alien flying you to Gotham to hang out with a man who dresses up like a bat. Try to look at it from my point of view. What mother in her right mind would agree to this?"

Richie started to reply, then stopped. Okay, she had a good point. It did sound a little crazy, when she put it like that. Then again, Richie's life had been just shy of insane for a little over two years as it was, so it shouldn't be that surprising. Brain puppets, evil computer programs, getting strapped to a table by a man obsessed with nanites, giant toys and robot teachers, an oversized, mutant bacterium raiding the school - all of it ranked right up there. Still, as far as crazy things went, having an alien fly him to Gotham to hang out with a man who dressed up like a bat was downright tame.

"A mom of a superhero?" Richie suggested lamely. "Look, I promise it will be okay. And the world is really counting on me. It could be worse, Mom. At least I'm not on drugs."

"Whoopee," his mother said dryly, waving her hands in mock-celebration. She sighed again, leaning back against the counter. "Do they have a support group for this kind of thing? Can I meet for coffee with Superman's mother and father once a month to complain about all of you?"

"Um, I don't think so," Richie said, frowning. It might be a good idea, though. Maybe he could suggest it to Superman during the flight. "So, can I go?"

"I guess so," she said, not looking too happy about it. "You need to call me every night to let me know you're okay, though. I don't trust these Justice League people not to take advantage of you. What am I supposed to tell your father? He hasn't been thrilled at your disappearances lately."

"The story's gonna be that I'm going fishing with Virgil," Richie told her. "He's going to stay out of sight while I'm gone, which shouldn't be too hard, since there's so much that needs to be done at the headquarters to get it back in shape."

"Fine," she said, pushing off the counter. "Bring me back a souvenir and no crime fighting while you're there. You're there to do what you need to do - let Batman take care of his own city. The last thing I want to hear on the news is that Gear is giggling his head off after an encounter with the Joker."

"Fair enough." Richie stood up and grabbed his mother up in a hug. "Thanks, Mom. I really appreciate it. You're so cool."

"Thanks," she said, kissing his cheek. "Now go save the world. And don't forget to call me when you get to Gotham."

* * *

Richie hurried down the street, a brown bag clutched in his hand and a small backpack over his shoulders. The conversation with his mother took longer than he expected, so he was running late. Superman would probably have something to say about it, but Richie didn't care. Superman was nearly invulnerable. His parents probably didn't worry nearly as much as his own. These things had to be handled delicately. 

Ducking down the ally, he stepped over a few piles of reeking trash as he walked into the space behind Gino Lopez's Pizza and Tacos, an interesting fusion place that did amazing business. Where else could you got a burrito pizza with hot sauce and nachos on the side? He didn't see Superman right away.

On his head, he'd tied a bandana, his glasses replaced with a pair of prescription sunglasses. While he could go as Gear, without Backpack he had some trouble getting the whole flying thing down. The last thing he wanted was to be a target for a random Bang Baby without his equipment.

"Superman?" he called, wondering idly if the man got sick of waiting and just left. It seemed highly unlikely, but if that were the case, Richie would just hop a bus to Gotham. He'd almost prefer it.

"You're late."

Looking up, Richie watched Superman drift down from above. He landed primly on the ground, arms crossed over his chest, looking far more imposing than a man in blue and red spandex had a right to look. Screwing up his courage, Richie forced himself to stand up straight and meet the alien's flat gaze head on.

"Yeah, I am," Richie said flippantly, as if he didn't care about Superman's schedule, which was true enough. This was his show, after all. "I had to talk to my mom. She made us sandwiches for the trip."

Richie thrust out the paper bag and Superman raised an eyebrow, some of that imposing façade fading in surprise. When he didn't do anything else, Richie reached in and pulled out the two wrapped sandwiches, handing one to the still-stunned Superman, unwrapping his own and holding it up for the Man of Steel's inspection. He waved it in what he hoped was an enticing manner.

"Peanut butter and honey," he said, taking a bite. "The bread's a little stale, but it was on sale. Also, she put in some frozen juice boxes. We'll probably have to wait until we get to Gotham to drink those. Eat up."

Superman looked at the sandwich like he was afraid it would bite him, then took the initiative and ate a bit of it. He chewed thoughtfully. Richie tried not to laugh at him. His mother, worried he wouldn't get lunch, wanted to make sure he ate. Since she considered impolite for a person to eat without having something to share, she made an extra lunch for Superman.

"She said she didn't want you suffering from low blood sugar while carrying me several hundred feet in the air," Richie explained, finishing off his sandwich in a few, easy bites. "I tried telling her that I didn't think it was possible for you to suffer from low blood sugar, but she didn't care. You know how mothers are."

"Yeah, I do," Superman said and he cracked his first smile of the day, brushing his hands together a few times to wipe them off. "Tell your mom she makes a good sandwich the next time you see her."

"Which will hopefully be in a few days." Richie leaned down and put his brown bag in his backpack, taking out a sweater and another bandana at the same time. He tugged the sweater on over his t-shirt, then tied the bandana around his face. It felt insufferably hot in all those layers, but he knew he'd need them. "Okay. I'm ready to go," he started, then paused, looking around. "Where's Backpack?"

He'd left the robot at the new headquarters, with the understanding that Superman would bring it along. It wasn't easy to carry Backpack around in its current state. Richie didn't want to draw strange looks as he walked home.

"I went ahead and flew it to Batman already," Superman said with a shrug. "I like having both my hands free while carrying people several hundred feet above the ground. Besides, it's always a good idea to warn Batman when he's going to have company. The man's a little cranky sometimes."

Richie didn't say anything along the lines that most of the Justice League was a little cranky more than sometimes, but he thought it, grateful that Superman wasn't a telepath.

"Makes sense," he said instead, stepping up to Superman and awkwardly putting his arms around his neck. He really didn't like this whole being carried thing, but he didn't have much of a choice. "Let's get this over with."

Superman nodded and picked Richie up like some kind of damsel in distress, then leapt into the air. Richie cringed, hoping nobody would see him like this. Then again, he was in disguise, even if it wasn't a very good disguise. A vague sense of vertigo overtook him as Superman accelerated high into the air, his stomach sinking to somewhere in the vicinity of his feet.

In the comic books, flying in the arms of a superhero was this romantic, enjoyable thing, the city rushing along below while strong arms held a person aloft. In reality, Richie found it incredibly uncomfortable and a little sickening, not to mention freezing. Superman accelerated slowly, which was good, since Richie's eyeballs would probably pop out of his head if the alien went immediately at top speed. The harsh winds blowing across his skin dried it out, making him instantly thirsty and itchy. As their speed picked up, the air around them became a negative space, like a sucking vacuum. It was hard to breathe, his lungs working over time to suck in the thin, icy air, and he buried his face against Superman's chest, trying to create a little pocket of undisturbed air to breathe in. His own harsh breathing made the air have a little too much carbon dioxide, leaving him feeling light-headed and nauseous. Tiny ice crystals formed on his eyelashes and the tips of his hair, his breath coming out in tiny puffs of visible clouds as the moisture in his breath crystallized in the freezing air. Only Superman's unnatural heat kept him from freezing to death as they soared to heights above any airplane's path, the clouds like fluffy pillows below them.

All in all, it was an absolutely terrible way to travel.

It didn't take very long to get to Gotham, but to Richie it felt like an eternity. His eyes squeezed shut, he didn't see their descent so much as felt it, his stomach rolling around in his abdominal cavity in protest. He risked opening his eyes just a crack as Superman dipped down steeply, the sandwich he'd just eaten rising up into this throat at the move. The light around them abruptly faded as they entered a deep cave, passing through the long tunnel in a few seconds before it opened up into a dark cavern that stretched around them dizzyingly in all directions.

Superman gradually slowed his speed and landed gently on the stone floor, the sounds of squeaking bats echoing eerily around them. Richie didn't make any move to let go, uncertain he could stand steadily with his body shaking so hard. Also, he was afraid he'd make a mess of the nice Batcave floor if he tried to move too quickly. Superman must have understood this, because he made no move to put Richie down.

"Batman!" Superman called, taking a few steps forward with Richie still in his arms. "We're here!"

"Good."

Batman's voice was deep and a little scary. In the expansive cave, Richie didn't know exactly where it was coming from, but he assumed the man was close by. Pushing out of Superman's arms, he stood shakily, Superman's hand on his shoulder to keep him from falling over. Doubling up, he wrapped his arms around his stomach, trying very hard not to throw up, eyes still squeezed shut as he drew in deep breaths in attempt to assure his lungs all was well. The air in the cave was damp and cool, smelling vaguely of guano, which did nothing to alleviate his nausea.

"Fly the friendly skies my ass," Richie groaned, sinking down to his knees and curling in around himself.

"Wow. How fast did you go?" came a younger voice Richie recognized as Robin's.

"Not that fast," Superman said, and he sounded a little put out.

Richie swallowed heavily. "I get air sick," he said, not opening his eyes or moving.

Someone walked up to Richie, hard-soled shoes clicking along the Batcave floor. The person leaned down and carefully removed the bandana around his face, pressing a cool glass of water to his lips. A gentle hand rubbed his back, a soothing, accented voice speaking softly in his ear.

"Easy now, Mr. Foley," Alfred said calmly in that grandfatherly way of his. "Drink this slowly. You'll feel right again in no time."

Richie sipped the water gratefully, which did do a good job of settling his stomach. Cracking his eyes open, he momentarily panicked when he couldn't see, then remember his sunglasses. Taking them off, he could see Alfred smiling at him, sort of. Everything was terribly blurry. Unshouldering his backpack, he reached in and grabbed his glasses case, swapping his sunglasses for his regular eyewear.

"That's better," Richie said, giving Alfred a tremulous smile. "Thanks Alfred."

"Not at all, Mr. Foley."

Alfred helped him stand up and Richie looked around the Batcave. It was the same as he remembered it, the giant penny glittering in the overhead industrial lighting, while the huge Batcomputer hummed softly in the background. Robin was sitting backwards in the chair in front of the computer, swinging his legs in a bored fashion. Batman stood nearby, standing stock still as he waited for Richie to recover. He didn't look especially happy, but Batman never looked especially happy.

"I'm okay now," he told the collection of two superheroes, a sidekick, and the butler. It wasn't a complete lie - he did feel remarkably better, now that both his feet were planted firmly on the ground. Scanning the room, he spotted Backpack resting on a table not far from where Superman landed. Walking over to it, he placed both his hands on the melted surface and sighed. "It's not."

Batman practically glided across the floor to stand behind him, looking over Richie's shoulder at the damaged robot. "Can you fix it?" he asked, gesturing with a quick wave of his hand over at his own tools and scientific equipment.

Under normal circumstances, Richie knew he would be downright giddy at the prospect of getting his hands on the amazing laboratory Batman owned. Unfortunately, it seemed like every time he got the chance, dire circumstances surrounded him. The last, and only previous, time he'd been in the Batcave, he'd been so worked up about dragging Virgil back into the present, he didn't get to enjoy it then, either. Now, probably due to a combination of the semi-fight with his mother, the sickening flight over from Dakota, and the loss of the gas station and everything that entailed, Richie felt more down than he expected.

"Hope so," Richie said, trying to keep the disheartening tone out of his voice, but he suspected he was failing. "It's going to take a few days, though, at least. I hope you don't mind me crashing here for awhile."

"I have already taken the liberty of preparing a room for you upstairs," Alfred said, walking up to Richie and relieving him of the small backpack he'd brought with him. It only contained a couple of shirts, a spare pair of slacks, and his toothbrush, deodorant, and other toiletries. Richie preferred to pack light when traveling. "You are free to roam the grounds and the upstairs as you like, with the exception of the west wing on the third floor, which is forbidden."

"Pardon?" Richie looked up at the butler in surprise.

Alfred smiled mildly at him. "I'm joking, of course."

"He does that sometimes," Robin said, giving Alfred a wicked smile. "He thinks he's funny, but he's not. You'll get used to it."

Richie grinned at Robin, a grin that quickly faded. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted Superman and Batman exchanging meaningful looks. With a final shared glance, the two of them disappeared off into the shadows and out of earshot. Richie knew, without a doubt, they were talking about him. He didn't like that so much.

"Come along, Master Timothy," Alfred said, gesturing with a small incline of his head toward the stairs. "I'll need your assistance to prepare dinner for our guests and I believe you have some homework demanding your attention prior to your patrol this evening?"

"Alfred, it's Saturday," Robin groaned, but he stood up anyway. "I've got all day tomorrow to do it."

"Yes, but if you do it now, you'll have all day tomorrow to relax," Alfred replied easily. "Furthermore, I'm certain Mr. Foley needs to focus his attentions on the task at hand without distractions. Let us allow him to do his work."

"Fine, fine," Robin said with a sigh that seemed to come from his toes. "This is because I said you're not funny, isn't it?"

"In some circles, I'm considered hilarious." Alfred gave Robin a tiny push in the direction of the stairs, gracing Richie with a small, encouraging smile over his shoulder. "If there is anything you require, Mr. Foley, you need only ask."

"Thanks, Alfred," Richie said, smiling at the two of them in spite of his bad mood and misgivings. "While I'm thinking about it, do you have a phone I can use? I need to call my mother and let her know I got here okay."

"I believe one of those many doo-dads on the main computer serves the purpose of a phone," Alfred informed him, gesturing vaguely over to the Batcomputer. "Second compartment from the right near the bottom, if memory serves me correctly."

"Great," Richie said, going over to the Batcomputer, "and you don't have to call me Mr. anything, remember?"

"As you wish, Richard." With that, Alfred and Robin disappeared up the stairs and Richie could still hear them arguing about the merits of doing homework early up until the point the door closed.

Sure enough, as Richie opened the panel, he saw a black phone hidden inside. While normally he didn't like to call long distance from an unfamiliar home, he figured Batman could afford it. Dialing the familiar number, he listened as the phone rang and waited patiently for his mother to answer, only occasionally glancing off into the shadows. Batman and Superman hadn't returned, yet.

* * *

"Uh huh. Yeah, Mom. I will." 

Richie rolled his eyes, the phone propped up between his shoulder and his chin. He'd been on the phone with his mother for ten minutes already. She'd started in on the benefits of good hygiene and not talking to strangers in the last five, which Richie found quite odd. Normally, she'd trust him to do these sorts of things. Maybe his being in Gotham with a man who dressed up like a bat made her even more nervous than she let on.

"Are you sure you're going to get enough to eat?" she asked, sounding worried. "Maybe I should have given you some more money."

"Yes, I'm sure," Richie told her, shifting the phone over to his other ear and squatting down to examine the goodies in Batman's tool kit. Was that a hydraulic saw? "Everything's cool, Mom. I promise. You don't have to worry about me."

"I always worry about you," came her exasperated reply. "It's in my job description."

Richie cracked a tiny smile at that, pushing aside the hydraulic saw, pleased to discover a set of perfectly calibrated torque wrenches. "I know, Mom, but nothing's wrong. Superman didn't drop me, Batman didn't corrupt me, and I haven't taken a joyride around the city on Robin's motorcycle. "

"Richard Osgood Foley, don't you even joke about something like that!" his mother said, alarmed. "Do you have any idea how dangerous those things are?"

"Yes, ma'am." Richie tried to hold back a squeal of girlish delight when he lifted up the next level of the toolbox and saw was rested below it. Oh, he was in tech geek heaven.

"They're nicknamed donor cycles for a reason, young man," his mother carried on. "Do you have any idea the statistics on... winning cases like this, Alice? We're going to need to completely rework what we've already submitted thanks to the prosecution making those motions to the judge."

Richie blinked at the sudden change in his mother's conversation, temporarily brought out of his technology-inspired euphoria by the subtle change in the tone of her voice. He could hear a door banging shut in the background and, right on cue, his father's complaining about something started up with force. Richie froze, straining to listen in, trying to get a picture of his father's mood. As usual, it didn't sound good.

"You believe what I have to put up with, Maggie?" he heard him yelling as he moved toward the kitchen where his mother was preparing dinner. "Unbelievable that... who are you talking to?"

"Just Alice from work," his mother lied smoothly, and Richie could tell she'd pulled the phone away and covered the mouthpiece with her hand, her voice muffled. "We've got some cases on our plate right now that..."

"I don't care. It's almost dinnertime and we don't accept calls at this hour, even on the weekends. You know that. Hang it up."

"Okay." She must have taken her hand off the receiver, because her voice became clearer. "I have to go, Alice. I'll talk to you later. Take care of yourself."

"I will," Richie promised uneasily, standing up, a frown on his face.

Even as he said that much, he could hear his father carrying on. "Where the hell is Richie? I need him to mow the lawn."

"He's gone on a fishing trip with Virgil," his mother started to say.

"That damn boy again? I'm telling you, Maggie, he's..."

Richie heard no more because his mother abruptly ended the call. Pulling the phone away from his ear, he stared down at the receiver in worry. His mother was going to get an earful tonight and Richie knew it was all his fault.

Sighing uneasily, Richie put the phone back in its compartment. He knew his mother could handle herself, but he didn't like the idea of her having to handle it herself when his father was in such a bad mood. Granted, it was part of the reason he stayed away from home so much, but that didn't make him feel any less guilty. Rubbing the back of his neck, Richie pushed Batman's toolbox with his foot, fighting temptation to kick it.

"Problem?"

Richie looked up, momentarily startled to see Batman and Superman standing close by, both of them watching him closely. Why oh why couldn't these superheroes make more noise when they walked? Richie could see himself having a heart attack one of these days.

"Same old, same old," Richie told Batman, his mood significantly altered. Suddenly, he missed Virgil. Virgil could always get him out of a funk. He doubted Batman or Superman would be so accommodating. "I'm going to have to reprogram your computer in order to access Backpack's files. Is that a problem? I'll be sure to back it up before I screw with anything."

His mild use of profanity made Superman blink rapidly. Richie found he didn't care that much. Superman could be the Boy Scout if he liked, but Richie never thought of himself that way. Boy Scouts tended to get their asses kicked while walking back from meetings in Dakota.

"That's fine," Batman said shortly. "I want an update as soon as you discover anything of interest."

"Yeah, yeah." Richie waved him off, kneeling back down in front of the toolbox, grabbing several things he'd know he need and carrying them over to the table in front of Backpack. He got to work, saying nothing more, hoping the two heroes would take the hint and leave him in peace. "I have a lot of work to do here and I want to get home as soon as possible, so you mind? I don't work well with people hovering over my shoulder."

Superman opened his mouth to protest, but Batman cut him off. "Fine. We'll be back in a few hours."

"Thank you."

Richie watched them leave, both of them getting in the Batmobile and disappearing out of the tunnel entrance. He didn't know where they were going and he didn't care at all, so long as they were gone. Now that the Batcave was empty, Richie drew his foot back in frustration, punting the toolbox across the floor.

* * *

"Broken, broken, melted, busted, broken, scrap metal, melted..."

Richie muttered to himself as he tore apart Backpack's insides, prying loose damaged components and ruined hardware, trying to get to the hard drive inside. He hadn't turned Backpack back on since Virgil's house and Richie was glad he hadn't bothered. While his robot couldn't feel pain, it amounted to the same thing. Backpack shouldn't have to exist while in this condition. It almost felt good, tearing it down.

"Broken, broken, broke..." The door to the upper level swung open, the stairway illuminated with light from the hallway behind it. Richie squinted up at the change in light, seeing a familiar shadow making its way down the stairs, holding what looked like a tray. "Alfred?"

"Good afternoon, Richard," Alfred said as stepped off the stairs into and onto the main level. "Well, almost evening, I dare say. Are you hungry? I brought you something to eat."

Richie almost said, 'no', but at that moment, his stomach chose to inform him quite loudly that he was, in fact, hungry. A bowl of oatmeal and a peanut butter sandwich certainly wasn't enough for one day. "Starving, Alfred. Thanks."

"Not at all."

Alfred looked down at the table and Richie took the hint, pushing aside some of scraps of Backpack to give him room to put the tray down. On top of the gilded tray sat a bowl of some chilled tomato soup, a couple of tuna fish sandwiches cut into triangles, a piece of chocolate cake, and, Richie noticed with a smile, the two juice boxes his mother packed for him before he left. He'd forgotten about them completely. Alfred must have found them while unpacking his meager possessions from the backpack he'd brought with him.

"Tuna fish again?" Richie asked, but he wasn't complaining. He smiled broadly and took a theatrical bite of one of the triangle sandwich pieces to make that especially clear.

"Brain food," Alfred told him with a warm smile and sat down in a chair across from Richie without being asked, taking up a sandwich of his own.

That made Richie smile. Alfred remembered, of course, how awkward he felt eating alone while the other man stood there watching. He didn't know how anybody could do it - it felt so demeaning to him. Then again, he'd probably never be rich enough to have a butler of his own, so who was he to judge?

"You put up with all of us so easily," Richie remarked suddenly.

Alfred raised a thin eyebrow at him. "Whatever do you mean?"

"I found out my mom knew about, well, this." Riche waved his hand around the Batcave and over at Backpack. "Now that she feels like it's cool to talk to me about it, she's been sorta freaking out. I'm surprised you're not bouncing off the walls. How do you put up with all of it?"

"Do not let this cool, collect façade fool you, Richard," Alfred said with a knowing smile. "I've done my fair share of wall bouncing. However, I attempt at all costs to do it in the privacy of my own quarters. As with anything, it's an adjustment. I'm assuming, freaking out aside, your mother took it well?"

"Yeah..." Richie trailed off, scratching his chin. He reached over and picked up the juice box. While not frozen solid anymore, he could tell it was still slushy. "She's known for awhile, I think, but didn't want to say anything. Now that we're square with each other, I think all those things she's been dying to say are just pouring out of her. It's a little overwhelming, now that I have to worry about her worrying about me, if that makes any sense."

"It makes perfect sense, Richard," Alfred said with a nod. "I constantly worry about Master Bruce and Master Tim when they go out on patrol. I don't think they're as careful as they should be, but, up to this point, we've been fortunate to avoid any unwelcome incidents."

"Up to this point." Richie sighed, stabbing the little metal circle on top of his juice box with the plastic straw from the back. "That's what I think is going to worry my mother the most - that she'll get a call from the hospital that I've been taken down, or worse, see something on the news, have to find out second hand. I'm feeling guilty, putting her through that. Add in all the lying she's been having to do to my dad, and..."

"Ah, so your father is not aware of your unique abilities and the way you've chosen to express them?" Alfred asked.

Richie thought that was the most tactful way he'd ever heard the whole situation worded. "No, he doesn't," Richie said with a forceful shake of his head, "and I hope to God he doesn't find out until I'm old enough to be out on my own. The things he says about Bang Babies are only half as bad as the things he says about..."

Richie caught himself before he said more, embarrassed. It wasn't easy having a father as bigoted as his own, particularly when their personal views were so conflicted with that of everyone else Richie associated with. It made him feel like he was putting on a show while at home, that even saying nothing was as good as an agreement, and he hated himself for it. But, Alfred didn't need to know that.

Regardless, Alfred was nodding, as if he understood completely. "Perhaps your mother is simply at a loss as to how to express her worries. It can be difficult to deal with such a situation alone. Is there no one she can talk to?"

"You mean like a support group?" Richie asked biting back a tiny laugh. "You know, she was just asking me about that before I left, wanted to know if Superman's parents might be interested in meeting for coffee once a month to complain about us."

"What an intriguing idea," Alfred said, looking up at the ceiling in wonder. "I would certainly be inclined to attend such an event."

"I think we're all too secretive to make it work, though," Richie told him, taking a sip of his juice box. "After all, if all our parents or significant others came together, secret identities would be revealed."

"There is that."

If Richie didn't know better, he thought Alfred looked slightly disappointed. "Of course," Richie said, rubbing his chin thoughtfully, "there could be a way I could set up an anonymous chat program online. That way, everyone could get together and talk, but secrets that needed to be kept could be protected."

"Now that's forward thinking," Alfred said cheerfully. "If you do decide to set up such a thing, be sure to let me know. I'd be more than willing to tackle that atrocious piece of hardware Master Bruce put in my room under those circumstances."

"I'll see what I can do," Richie promised, then looked over at Backpack. "Of course, I should probably tackle this puzzle first."

"I would agree that is a priority." Alfred glanced over at the dismantled Backpack with a small frown. "How are things progressing?"

"Slowly." Richie crumpled up his juice box and tossed it on the tray, narrowly missing the chocolate cake still awaiting his ingestion. "Everything's totally fried up. I'm just praying I can get something out of it. Over a year of work, lying there in ruin."

"It is truly a disgrace," Alfred said with sympathy. "Do you have any suspicions as to who may have perpetrated the act?"

"Tons, but none of them any better than the others," Richie told him, not without a hint of frustration. "It pisses me off, Alfred, and I'm not ashamed to admit it."

Alfred picked up a melted piece of Backpack's hardware, looking at it with interest. "Your feelings are not misplaced," he said. "Anyone would have a right to be pissed, as you put it, given the circumstances."

"Yeah, well, tell that to the Justice League." Richie let out a sigh, reaching for the chocolate cake and digging his fork into it harshly. "I blink twice and they think I'm up to something."

"I'm sure the answers will come to light soon enough," Alfred said and Richie couldn't help but notice how the butler failed to contradict his last statement. "What are your plans?"

"I'm going to try to salvage the hard drive, see if there's any data on there about who might have set fire to our HQ. With any luck, I'll be able to recover the data from the Watchtower, too, since starting from scratch would suck."

The chocolate cake was very good, Richie realized as he took a bite of it. Already, he could feel himself calming down. Maybe those studies about chocolate being a mood enhancer had more weight to them than he realized. Then again, maybe it had more to do with being able to talk about the situation candidly with someone that wasn't second-guessing his every motive.

Richie blinked at that line of thinking, his second forkful of chocolate cake hanging in the air at his aborted attempt to bring it to his mouth.

"Alfred, can I ask you a question?" Richie asked, dropping the fork back down on his plate.

"Of course," Alfred replied, putting down the piece of Backpack he'd been examining.

Swallowing, Richie rubbed the back of his neck. "Do you think I'm getting especially paranoid?"

"Especially paranoid?" Alfred asked, looking at Richie sideways. "Not especially, no."

"But I am a little paranoid, right?" Richie pressed, then laughed at himself. "Wait, can I be paranoid about being paranoid? Is that even possible?"

Alfred graced him with a tiny smile. "I told you once, the last time you were here, that you possessed an amazing gift," he said quietly, but with great feeling. "My observations at that time still hold true. You are an incredibly gifted person, Richard, for good or ill. The fact that you use your gifts for good is wonderful in it of itself. However, the fact that you can recognize how your gift can be misused and the fact that you recognize that other people may foster opinions regarding that misuse speaks highly of your character. To be frank, Richard, I'd be more concerned if you weren't a little paranoid."

"So, I am paranoid," Richie said, trying to sort through Alfred's gentle words, "but it's a good thing?"

"Exactly," Alfred said with a nod of his head.

"And the fact that everybody looks at my funny...?"

"To be expected, to some extent." With a tiny shrug, Alfred stood up, gathering up the remains of their meal. "To be honest with you, Richard, sometimes I'm more than a little concerned about your contemporaries up in the sky. Anyone who isn't is deluding themselves and self-delusion always leads to trouble, in my experience."

"They don't seem concerned," Richie said, thinking about his recent encounters with the Justice League.

"Precisely my point." Alfred sighed deeply, looking down at the tray. "One thing I am grateful for is that Master Bruce has decided to associate himself with them only on a part time basis."

"Maybe it would be better if I left the Watchtower as it is now, nothing more than a hunk of space junk," Richie said more to himself than to Alfred. "At the very least, I'd feel better about dismantling that giant gun. I'm getting the impression, though, it's no longer my decision to make."

"It is always your decision, Richard," Alfred said solemnly, "but I trust that you'll make the right one."

"At least someone does," Richie said, surprised at how bitter his tone had become.

"I'm certain I'm not the only one." Alfred nodded over the Batcomputer. "Perhaps there's someone else you'd like to call to prove my point?"

Richie looked over at the phone, a warm feeling coming over him. He smiled at Alfred, nodding. "You know what? I think I may just do that."

"Very good, sir," Alfred said, giving Richie a mock bow, then he turned and walked back up the stairs to the mansion above.

As soon as the door closed, Richie hurried over to the Batcomputer, grabbing the phone.

* * *

"You're kidding me."

"I wish I was, man. I wish I was."

Richie smiled into the phone, even though Virgil couldn't see it. In the background, he could hear the faint sounds of the Kingdom of Sunn soundtrack. He could almost imagine his friend, stretched out on the floor, head held at an awkward angle as he propped the phone up on his shoulder so both hands would be free to grip the controller. Ironically enough, Richie was in much the same situation, except instead of trying to save the Kingdom of Sunn from another thousand years of darkness, he was fiddling with a little device.

"One look at GL and you should have seen those guys go running," Virgil was saying. "Man, when are we gonna get that kind of street cred?"

"Never," Richie said with a tiny laugh. "They're just too used to us, bro. We're over-saturated in our market."

"Maybe we should try a different town for awhile," Virgil said, then he cursed, the telltale sound of his main character dying, again, coming over the line. "You know, build up a 'rep, then come back and see if one look of us is enough to make Ebon head for the hills. Think Central City could use a couple of heroes?"

"The Flash might not like that," Richie said, picking up a tiny soldering iron and fusing together a couple of transistor plates.

"Screw The Flash." Virgil grunted and it sounded like he was standing up and stretching.

Richie grinned. "No, thanks."

He didn't have to see Virgil to know the other boy was flipping him off. "So, you almost done there?" Virgil asked instead. "I'm ready to have you back. GL is cool and all, but you win, hands down, in the friend and partner department. That man never fails to make me feel like an incompetent kid, even if he's just standing there looking all... cool."

"I'm working on it," Richie said, moving his device underneath a lighted, oversized magnifying glass, squinting down at his progress. "The tricky part is getting into Backpack's files. It doesn't play well with others."

"Who's to blame for raising a disobedient, defiant child?"

"The company it keeps," Richie quipped. "You're a bad influence, bro. I still like you, but it's true."

"Always blaming society for your own short-comings, man," Virgil replied.

Satisfied with his progress so far, Richie reached out and grabbed a tiny screwdriver, dropping in another component to his device. "It's easier than taking the blame yourself."

Virgil yawned. "But that leads to the dark side."

"I thought fear led to the dark side," Richie replied, stifling a yawn of his own. "And don't do that, man. It's contagious and I've got a lot of work to do here."

"Sorry," Virgil said, yawning again and not sounding sorry at all. "While some of us were sitting around on our butts all day playing with toys, others were busy keeping the streets of Dakota safe for well-meaning citizens everywhere."

"Yeah, I'm sure standing there while GL does all the work is really tough," Richie said, snorting a laugh.

"You do know I'll have to hurt you when you get back, don't you?" Virgil deadpanned. "Which, I'm hoping is soon, but I noticed you didn't answer my question."

"No, I'm not almost done," Richie said belatedly, "but I'm getting there. Probably another day or two at best, maybe more, depending on what kind of data I can retrieve."

Virgil gave a long-suffering sigh at that. "Well, hurry it up. I want you back."

"Since when have you been so co-dependent?" Richie asked curiously, switching the phone to his other ear.

"I'm not co-dependent," Virgil said defensively. "I've just got... a funny feeling, that's all. This whole situation is getting to me. It doesn't feel sudsy. I mean, we were attacked, man. Not directly, sure, but it's almost worse this way. All I know is that I ain't comfortable with you so far away and I want you home."

Richie frowned, putting down the tool in his hand, sitting up a little straighter. Virgil did sound incredibly worried, more so than Richie was used to hearing. It wasn't the first time they'd been separated and, fears of various kidnappings aside, Richie knew his best friend well enough to know something else was on his mind.

"What's up, bro?" he asked, keeping his tone purposely light and, in true paranoid fashion, looking over his shoulder to make sure he was alone. "Something shake loose?"

"Not a damn thing, which is part of what's annoying me," Virgil told him. "You'd think if it was somebody in our 'hood, they'd be boasting about it by now. It doesn't feel local, which really freaks me out. The timing is a little suspicious, too. If this has something to do with the Watchtower, then it's got something to do with you. I'm worried somebody might be aiming for you, man, and I just know I'd feel better if you were where I could see you and watch your back."

"I'm fine," Richie promised him sincerely, looking around the Batcave. "In fact, I'm probably in the safest place imaginable at the moment. Even if somebody is aiming for me, which we don't know for certain, they can't get me in their sights down here. It's cool."

"I know," Virgil said, sounding frustrated. "Trust me, man, I know that. But it still doesn't make me feel any better. Just hurry up and get back so we can take care of all this shit and get back to life as we know it, okay?"

"I'll do my best," Richie said, frowning down at the device on the table in front of him. "I'm working on something right now to speed things along. It ain't gonna be pretty, bro, but it'll get the job done. I'm looking forward to getting all this behind us as much as you are, man."

"Okay. Just... be careful, please?"

"I'm always careful." Richie grinned, trying to lighten the mood. "I'm the king of careful. Careful's my middle name."

"Your middle name is Osgood," Virgil corrected him, "but thanks. All right, man. I'm gonna crash. I gotta full day of crime fighting tomorrow, plus I'm supposed to be teaching some six-year-olds how to shoot hoops. Wish me luck."

"Better than that, I'll wish you no concussions," Richie replied with a laugh. "Night, bro."

"Night."

The line disconnected with a click and Richie sighed, closing the connection on his end and dropping the phone back down on the table. Taking off his glasses, he rubbed his eyes, which felt dry and itchy from being focused on tiny things for too long. He could feel a headache building up right behind his face and he tried to will it away.

He'd never heard Virgil sound that worried, not since that time he got shot. One thing he'd learned about Virgil over the many years of their friendship was that his instincts rarely steered him wrong, when he listened to them. If Virgil felt that things weren't quite right, Richie was inclined to believe him.

It didn't make him feel any better about his situation. Virgil did have a valid point - if the fire in the gas station was, in fact, Watchtower related, that meant somebody knew too much. Aside from a few times when they helped them out, neither Static or Gear had any direct ties to the Justice League, as far as anybody knew. Richie didn't even think most of the Justice League even had any clue Richie was the one who designed their current base of operations for them. He'd asked J'onn to keep his involvement low-key, for a myriad of reasons, a request he knew J'onn didn't renege on. But, if J'onn didn't tell, who figured it out? How much did they know?

"I hate this," Richie muttered to himself, slipping his glasses back on.

"Sure, the smell of guano takes some getting used to, but it's not bad as all that."

Richie's head snapped up and he recoiled in shock, seeing Robin standing next to his table, looking down at Backpack.

"You're all trying to kill me, aren't you?" Richie asked him. "I'm going to tie a little bell around the neck of every superhero within a hundred miles, I swear."

Robin gave him a broad grin, hopping up to sit on the table. "That only works on cats, I think."

"I'd make it work," Richie groused. "Something I can help you with?"

"Nope. I'm just bored." Robin pointed at the device Richie was working on. "What's that?"

"A thing." Richie glanced over his shoulder. The Batmobile was still gone, which meant Superman and Batman were still off doing whatever it was they were doing. "Do you know where they went?"

"Like they ever tell me anything," Robin said with a dramatic roll of his eyes. "I'm just the sidekick, remember?"

Richie smiled at that. "I think it's less a sidekick thing and more a we're too young to be in their special club thing."

"Well, whatever it is, it's annoying." Robin started swinging his feet back and forth in a bored fashion. "So, was that Static on the phone? How's it going in Dakota?"

"It's summer, school's out, there's an economic depression and a heat wave, and everybody's cranky," Richie said, counting off the problems on his fingers. "Static's got his work cut out for him, but thankfully, GL is there to give him a hand until I can get back."

"I wish school was out for me," Robin said, looking wistful. "Bruce makes me get tutoring year round, even on the weekends. He says it's important for me to keep up, especially with all the crime fighting. All I know is that it sucks."

Richie thought it sounded nice. How cool would it be, he wondered, to work with a private teacher, who could focus on his needs and give him the challenge his brain so desperately needed? The thought of going back to Dakota Union High next year made him cringe. Every time he walked into the classroom, he could feel his brain slipping that much closer to a permanent coma.

"At least he cares," Richie said, picking his device back up and turning it over in his hand.

"Yeah, I guess." Robin slid off the table, stretching. "Anyway, Alfred asked me to come down here to see if you needed anything or if you planned on going to sleep anytime soon."

Richie shook his head. "Tell him no to both questions. I've got my work cut out for me tonight and Static wants me back ASAP."

"Why?" Robin asked with a tiny frown. "I thought you said Green Lantern was helping him out."

"He is, but one of the things Static and I share is a healthy dose of paranoia," Richie told him, reaching for the soldering iron once more. "He says he won't feel better until I'm home again and I'm inclined to agree with him. We do better as a team than we do when we're apart."

Robin snorted a laugh. "Damn, man, it's like you two are married or something."

"Or something," Richie said, looking up and sharing a quick grin with Robin. "He's more like a mother hen, actually."

"Cluck, cluck, cluck," Robin replied dryly, complete with a small flapping of his elbows. "Well, I'll go tell Alfred what you said. Don't be surprised if he comes down here every couple of hours and tries to feed you."

Richie laughed. "Guess Static's not the only mother hen I need to worry about."

"Not by a long shot," Robin said, then gave Richie a tiny wave. "See you in the morning. Don't crash the Batcomputer."

"I'll do my best not to," Richie called to Robin as the Boy Wonder practically bounced back up the stairs.

Setting down his device, which wasn't finished, Richie stood up, walking over to the Batcomputer. He pulled open a couple of window, then rested his fingers on the keyboard, letting himself think for a few moments. This next part, a program of his own devising to integrate with the thing he'd been working one, was crucial.

"At least, I hope I don't crash it," Richie muttered to himself, then let his fingers fly.

* * *

Two hours later, Richie found himself standing by what was left of Backpack, yawning broadly and scratching the back of his neck. He was tired, very tired, yet very happy at the same time. Everything that he needed to set up was set up. Now it was just a matter of doing it.

Using Batman's tools, he'd managed to pry Backpack apart, its internal components bared for all the world to see. The critical stuff inside didn't seem overly affected by the heat of the fire, as he suspected, but several subsystems were damaged beyond repair and needed to be replaced. The most important thing, the hard drive, now rested in Richie's palm. He was hesitant to plug it into the Batcomputer.

The compatibility issue ranked right up there. He'd purposely designed Backpack not to be compatible with anything, at least as far as its own programming went. The machine could interface with any system, but not in the traditional sense. Richie's own physical connection with the robot allowed him to process data on different computers through Backpack, but that wasn't the same as trying to make Backpack's programming work on a foreign system. Much like the Watchtower, Backpack was completely unique.

There was another reason for his hesitation - fear.

Richie wasn't spineless, per se, but he did like to avoid danger whenever possible. A side effect of spending his life in the not-so-good part of town in a gang-ridden, violent city, he had no problem turning chicken and running if he felt threatened. Time and time again, he'd have to drag Virgil out of various situations, preventing him from upsetting someone that might very well do a drive by on his house later that evening if he pushed it. Call it an innate sense of survival, call it cowardliness, Richie took heart in the fact that he was still alive in spite of all statistics to the contrary.

It was easy to be a superhero when you actually had super powers in a physical way, Richie mused as he pulled open the side panel of the Batcomputer, looking for a spare USB slot. Running into dangerous situations must be a piece of cake when a person didn't have to worry about getting shot, knew they could super-speed out of the way if something came at them, or could fall through the floor or change into a freakish monster on command. For that precise reason, Richie respected Batman more than any of the other Justice League members. The man had no special powers, just years and years of training and a healthy dose of talent in his favor.

Of course, Richie didn't have those years and years of training and talent, at least in a physical dexterity sense, wasn't in his genes. He knew he was more likely to trip over his own feet than perform daring acrobatics. As his father liked to say, he came from a long, long line of stable individuals, grunt workers who formed the backbone of society. No war heroes could be found in his family history, just people who lived good, honest lives and worked their fingers to the bone to make the lives of others a little easier, usually without any credit to speak of to their name.

So, holding the hard drive in his hand, Richie looked down at it with apprehension. Whatever he found encoded on this disk would no doubt lead him on a spiral of events, none of them pleasant. He could practically feel the bruises and aches he knew he'd have after all this was done.

He wasn't a coward. He fought in spite of his fears, became a superhero regardless of the fact that it could get him killed someday. Oh, he was afraid - he was afraid all the time, but it didn't stop him. Some people might call that bravery. Richie figured it was probably some kind of treatable mental health problem. Either way, he knew he had to plug that hard drive in and get things rolling.

"Here goes nothing," Richie muttered to himself, dropping the hard drive into an external case and hooking it up with the USB port. Reaching over to the Batcomputer, he pressed the button to boot it up again, waiting patiently as it came back to life. He sincerely hoped Backpack's hard drive wouldn't crash the whole system, but he wasn't one hundred percent sure that would be the case.

Walking back over to the table where Backpack lay, Richie picked up a tiny device, a slapped together job that took up most of his time after Batman and Superman left. While he could simply use the keyboard and the mouse to try to organize Batman's system to recognize Backpack's hardware, he didn't have that kind of time. Reprogramming the Batcomputer by hand would take days. No, he needed to get at it more directly.

The part of Backpack that allowed him to interface directly with it, the tiny, unremarkable piece of hardware that he'd designed specifically to interact with Brainiac's leftovers hidden throughout his body, did not survive the fire intact. As a result, he'd made a new one, not quite as good, from things he found lying around the Batcave. The Batcomputer finally booted up, Richie pulled up a few files, not touching the hard drive icon on the screen, plugging in his device and executing a program he'd written before shutting the computer down the first time.

Then, he sat down in Batman's chair, gripped the bottom of the seat with white-knuckled fingers, and braced himself as the world exploded.

White hot pain shot down from the base of his spine throughout the rest of his body and Richie felt himself jerk rigid, a scream he wanted to badly to escape from his mouth stuck fast in his throat. The world took on a green tinge, his vision gradually dimming away as the three implants in his brain proper sparked to life, overriding unnecessary functions, such as the ability to move, talk, or see in order to free up space. Batman's unfamiliar programming screamed into his mind, pure data at its most primal flying around every synapse in his most vital organ.

It hurt, but Richie was fully aware before he started this whole thing that it would hurt, a lot. He wasn't disappointed. The main reason for Backpack and the Watchtower's unique programming, aside from security, had to do with the how he interfaced in both places, in a familiar way that his brain liked. A lot of it was loosely based on Brainiac's own programming, a syntax eerily similar to Kryptonian design, as Brainiac's implants preferred that. Neither his brain nor the implants liked Batman's programming.

But at its heart, Brainiac evolved to interface with the computer systems of alien cultures with ease in order to overtake them. The only difference between Brainiac and Richie, at this point, was that Richie could feel pain, whereas Brainiac could not. Stupid Brainiac.

The pain eventually subsided some, never quite going away, but definitely less intense. Once his mind adjusted to Batman's computer, Richie got to work, changing the programming at its most basic levels, making it compatible with his own. As soon as he got Backpack's hard drive online, Richie knew it would be smooth sailing. Backpack served the purpose of a filter when Richie interfaced with new computers and when he got it working, he knew he'd be okay.

He couldn't feel time passing when he was like this. The part of his mind not frantically changing Batman's programming thought back on a time shortly after he incorporated Brainiac's implants into his hardware. He'd gone to the gas station early one Saturday morning and interfaced with the web just like this. To him, it felt only like a few seconds, but when he brought himself back, he saw Virgil standing by him, pale, terrified, and incredibly upset. Richie had been lost in his systems for almost twelve hours without realizing it and he'd scared Virgil half to death. After that, he made sure Backpack contained an accurate chronometer so that wouldn't happen again.

Virgil once asked him what it felt like. Richie couldn't describe it to save his life. When his brain was jacked into a computer, it defied traditional logical thought and there wasn't anyway to describe it using conventional language. Addicting, was one way to think of it. With Backpack and without pain, it felt so incredibly good to be part of the system, his mind relishing in the challenge it provided and getting the workout it truly deserved. Pain disappeared, his body disappeared, his mind disappeared, time disappeared, replaced with pure, unadulterated understanding and energy. He never felt more aware than when like this, never felt more unaware at the same time. He never felt more at peace, maybe because nothing else mattered.

On many occasions, Virgil declared it dangerous. Richie agreed with him. It was dangerous, ridiculously so. He wouldn't fool himself into thinking otherwise. He did it anyway. It probably all tied back to that undiagnosed mental health problem he suffered from.

Like dropping a stick of RAM into a motherboard, everything suddenly clicked into place. Batman's system belonged to him now, at its very root, and he accessed Backpack's logs with a quick flick of his mind. The systems integrated perfectly and it felt like Backpack was crawling around right next to him once more. Richie smiled.

When he opened his eyes, though, his smile faded. Superman's face filled up his entire field of vision. He looked angry.

"What the _hell_ are you doing?"

To be continued...

A/N: Sorry for the slight delay in getting this chapter out. RL issues. You understand. There will probably be another slight delay in the chapter after this for the same reason. Patience is a virtue. Heheh.

Anyway, next chapter: Who destroyed the gas station? Who tried to hack the Watchtower? Where did Superman and Batman go for so long? Answers to all these questions and less in the next chapter of House Call! Stay tuned!


End file.
